


You’re My Best Friend

by ImprobableDreams900



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Automotive theft, Backstory, Break Up, Car Chases, Established Relationship, Footnotes, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Language, Non-sexual Non-Con, POV Bentley (partially), Queen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-26 20:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: The Bentley has always been very fond of her demon. But is he just as fond of her?





	1. The Story So Far (Part I)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not allowed to write long things anymore, so here’s a short(ish) story about Crowley and his car. :)
> 
> There are a lot of car/driving terms in this, and I did my best to be accurate in terms of both 1926 Bentleys and British terminology, but I’m not an expert at either, so my apologies for any mistakes!

In 1926, a slim man in a well-cut suit ran his fingertips lightly over the gleaming bonnet of a brand new 6½ Litre Bentley saloon and awakened more than his own certainty that this beautiful vehicle was the one he was going to take home with him. For his fingertips, which usually conveyed nothing more than idle curiosity, in this instant held a touch of magic, a sudden burst of affection from a creature who, by all conventional accounts, should have been incapable of feeling such an emotion at all.

Crowley lifted his fingers from the Bentley’s bonnet, but the contact had already been made. His spark of admiration settled into the Bentley’s frame and, without further ado, awakened the very spirit of the vehicle as if from a deep slumber.

The Bentley, so new to conscious existence, soon began to fade away again, like a fogged-over patch on a pane of glass evaporating as the warmth left it. She was just slipping under when Crowley returned for her. His touch on her door handle was like being pulled from a dark and still sea, and then, when he had made himself comfortable, he placed his hands reverently upon her steering wheel and started her engine with a gentle thought.

And this small miracle, the invocation of which was so routine to Crowley, poured enough of his magic into the Bentley’s very core that she felt herself fully awaken.

“There you are, old girl,” Crowley said in delight, sounding both impressed and reverential as her engine began to warm with a rumbling purr. “How about a drive?”

And so the Bentley met her first and only[1] owner and began her life in earnest.

⁂

It soon became very clear that Crowley did not, in fact, know how to drive, despite all of his enthusiasm about vehicles in general. Meanwhile, the Bentley quickly realised from her surveys of other cars on the road that she was a prime specimen, cutting edge and also truly top-of-the-line. She was a luxury sporting vehicle, and she had zero confidence that the man who had bought her knew how to steer a wheelbarrow.

Luckily for both of them, Crowley was an exceptionally quick learner. It also didn’t hurt any that, whenever the Bentley found herself careening towards pedestrians, buildings, street signs, or other cars, the obstacles leapt magically out of her path.[2]

Though the Bentley’s initial, fleeting impression of Crowley was that he’d chosen her because he wanted to elevate himself to the status of someone who would own such a magnificent vehicle as herself, she soon realised that that wasn’t the whole story. Because Crowley smiled so genuinely when he saw her, and sometimes—only when he was _absolutely_ certain they were alone—he spoke to her softly and told her she was doing a good job.

This affection was only underscored when, several years later, the Bentley was introduced to the only other person of any consequence in Crowley’s life.

“No, no, absolutely not.”

“Whaaat? Come on, angel, it’ll be fun!”

“I am not getting into that—that—twice-benighted death trap,” Aziraphale sniped back, folding his arms. “I refuse.”

“Aw, come on, it’s not so bad!” Crowley tried, gesturing invitingly towards the Bentley, who did her best to gleam appealingly. “She’s really quite comfortable, and it can be a short trip! Just over to Charing Cross Road and back. You’re telling me you’re not even a little bit curious?”

“I was curious about _Titanic_ too,” Aziraphale said stiffly. “You can take your hellish contraption and go.”

Crowley visibly deflated. The Bentley, meanwhile, took all the energy she’d been using to make herself shine enticingly and instead tried to direct a bit of glare into Aziraphale’s eye.

Aziraphale stood there stiffly for a moment more, and then relented when Crowley continued to look crestfallen. “Well, I suppose you could come in for a bit of tea before you pop off.”

Crowley accepted this compromise gracefully, though he did go out of his way to make a show of patting the Bentley’s bonnet in a comforting manner before following Aziraphale into his bookshop.

That was the first time the Bentley was passed over in favour of Aziraphale, but it would not be the last.

⁂

It was a full year before Crowley was able to coax Aziraphale into the Bentley, and another two after that before Aziraphale took a second trip. This delay was entirely prompted by Crowley almost hitting a bus on their first trip, thus reinforcing Aziraphale’s death-trap hypothesis. At this point, the Bentley was working on actively discouraging Aziraphale’s attendance, quite against Crowley’s wishes, because Aziraphale was clearly a negative influence in Crowley’s life.

It was patently obvious to the Bentley that, while Crowley was very invested in his friendship[3] with Aziraphale, Aziraphale wasn’t half as interested. For instance, Crowley drove her to Aziraphale’s small Soho bookshop on a monthly, nearly weekly, basis, while Aziraphale made seemingly no effort to visit Crowley of his own volition. And every time Crowley visited Aziraphale, he had to spend several minutes standing outside on the pavement persuading the recalcitrant angel before he was allowed entrance to the bookshop. 

This didn’t sit right with the Bentley. For the past decade now, Crowley had selflessly sustained her with his magic, keeping her fuel gauge at full[4] and miracling away any small dents or scratches he was unable to prevent entirely. He took good care of her, and she wanted to do the same for him. And, in this regard, Aziraphale did not seem to be on the same page. 

⁂

For many relatively troubleless years, the Bentley contented herself with trying to passively aggressively tell Aziraphale he was a bit of a twit,[5] but then the depression hit and, only a few years later, the Bentley went to war. 

The first hint the Bentley had of the coming trouble was on a sunny afternoon in 1939, when Crowley stumbled out the mansion block where his flat was and towards her, breathing very quickly and looking unusually pale. His hand was shaking as he started her ignition with a wave, leaving the Bentley to flip on the magnetos and adjust the spark timing herself.

Crowley had only driven her down a few streets, still breathing rapidly and clearly losing an internal battle to calm down, when he abruptly jerked her steering wheel towards the edge of the road and hit her brakes, sending them screeching to a halt beside the fence bordering Berkeley Square.

“I—I just—no, no, no, no, not again, I just—I can’t do it—” Crowley abruptly broke off his own stammers, sucking in rapid, frantic breaths and shaking. His head dipped towards the steering wheel, looking as though he was trying to curl up in the seat.

Alarmed, the Bentley hastily cast around for something she could do to help him. When very few options presented themselves, she settled for switching on the car radio that Crowley had had installed earlier in the year. She tuned it to a station playing some soothing swing. Then she let her engine fall into what was hopefully a comforting-sounding idle and waited worriedly for Crowley to calm down.

It took a long while, but eventually Crowley’s breathing slowed, his vicelike grip on her steering wheel finally relaxing. And then he was just sitting there, his forehead resting against the top of the steering wheel, looking utterly defeated.

_“Toot?”_ the Bentley prompted with a quiet burst of her klaxon. She let her engine rev a little higher.

“No…not yet,” Crowley said faintly, moving his elbows to the sides of the steering wheel and resting his hands against the top of his head, his forehead still pressed to the top of the wheel. “Just…stay with me here a minute…please.”

More worried than before, the Bentley switched the radio to a station playing even more relaxing music—this time courtesy of Irving Berlin—and made sure to keep the volume low as Crowley just sat there and focussed on his breathing. To one side of them, the trees lining the square swayed slightly in the breeze; to the other, the occasional car trundled by, stirring up the autumn leaves strewn across the asphalt.

When Crowley finally raised his head, complexion still ashen and eyes slightly red, he put her in gear and just sat there for a moment more with his foot on the clutch, as though he didn’t know where to go.

The Bentley hesitated and then, struck by sudden inspiration, she rewound the radio a few minutes. She played it back, the lyrics effortlessly filling the air: _“Why is my heart feeling lighter? I’m on my way home.”_

Crowley shook his head slightly, though the Bentley wasn’t sure what exactly he was refusing. He took a deep, slow breath, pulled her out into the road, and drove with uncharacteristic slowness and deference to traffic laws to Aziraphale’s bookshop.[6]

They sat outside the bookshop for several long minutes, Crowley visibly collecting himself and making an effort to look composed again. When he was done, he let out a long breath and patted the Bentley’s steering wheel gratefully. “Thank you, old girl.”

Then he got out of the car and, visibly making an effort to smooth over the unsteadiness still in his stride, walked into the bookshop.

Utterly flummoxed as to what had undone Crowley so completely, the Bentley idled outside the bookshop for some time. It was only when she switched the radio to a station airing a news broadcast that she heard the terrible news.

That was how the Bentley learned that there had been a war, years before she was ever built—a war to end all wars. It would be another few months before she put two and two together and realised that Crowley had been in it.

**

As this new war broke out, Crowley was obliged to join the Germans for political reasons,[7] and that meant assuming a German identity. He planned to pass himself off as an officer, so he took the Bentley with him and rented a nice house in a well-to-do area of Berlin. 

While Crowley seemed to have pulled himself together rather well, it wasn’t difficult to tell that he was profoundly unhappy and on-edge. It wasn’t until much later that the Bentley would realise that this had been brought on by more than just horror and unease at the increasing cruelties carried out on a near-daily basis in the city.

Thus far, the Bentley had lived a relatively sheltered life in Central London, and even the snatches of world news broadcast on the BBC National Programme that Crowley had occasionally listened to with a worried frown hadn’t prepared her for what she would witness parked outside of Crowley’s Berlin address during the war.

A few years after their arrival, Crowley drove to the residence of his superior officer, a major in the Administrative Police.[8] This was not uncommon, but Crowley seemed especially nervous on this trip, glancing repeatedly in her mirrors as though worried they were being followed. He had been doing increasingly poorly as the war raged on, his complexion growing sallow and nerves wearing thin. The Bentley was worried about him, but she was worried about a lot of things. The world, it had turned out, was so much darker than Mayfair and Soho had made it out to be. She wanted desperately to go home, back to London before the world had become so complicated and humanity so terrible, and she knew Crowley wanted the same thing. 

They pulled into the expansive drive of the major’s house, and Crowley got out. He walked into the house, nodding to the two soldiers on guard outside, and then…simply never returned.

Instead, two other soldiers strolled up to her, picked her ignition lock, and took her away. She tried to fight, of course, as she had never needed to before, when Crowley had been with her—hitting the brakes, killing her engine, driving mercilessly into the kerb—but she was new to it, to the idea of fighting back, and couldn’t shake them.

It wasn’t long before she fell into the hands of a Nazi colonel who seemed quite intent on keeping her for himself, regardless of the fact that she was, by his very own estimation, “a piece of Tommy junk.”

Without Crowley’s magic to sustain her, she felt herself begin slipping away, her strength fading rapidly as the days flew past. She wished fervently that Crowley would come for her—stride out of the major’s house, realise she had been stolen, and seek her out—but even that hope flagged as her spirit faded.

The Bentley never saw the end of the war.

She only lasted two weeks without Crowley, wasting her strength on numerous fruitless escape attempts and finally giving up and just trying to stay conscious until, at last, she used up the last drop of magic Crowley had imbued her with.

**

It was that same touch of magic that revived her again some days after the Allied capture of Berlin. Crowley had somehow, impossibly, survived the war,[9] and he had come for her after all. 

For, despite all the horrors of the war, Crowley had been unwilling to leave Germany without taking home the one piece of home he had brought there with him. And, even damaged and dusty though she was, hidden away in a forgotten garage on the edge of the bombed-out city, Crowley couldn’t have mistaken his girl anywhere.

**

Their return to London came as as much of a relief to the Bentley as it did to Crowley, though their mutual eagerness to return home faded as they saw the sorry state the war had left the city in.

The Bentley had been expecting Crowley to return to Mayfair first, to see what remained of his flat, but instead Crowley took her a different way, following the familiar route to Soho.

The Bentley tried to indicate to Crowley that she didn’t think this was necessarily a good idea. The latter half of the war seemed to have been even more unkind to Crowley than the first half, and he was much thinner than the last time she had seen him—truly an accomplishment—and quieter, and far less full of that brilliant optimism that had characterized him previously. The Bentley felt certain that the last thing he needed right now was to be turned away at Aziraphale’s doorstep as he had been so many times before.

She tried to tell Crowley this as best she could, by gently tapping the brakes and flashing her indicator towards Mayfair, but Crowley didn’t seem to notice, instead breathing a little quicker than usual and driving her as swiftly as was safe through the ruined streets of the city they had made their home.

When they arrived at Aziraphale’s bookshop, the Bentley saw that it was still standing, miraculously untouched by the bombs that had decimated the neighbourhood. As the Bentley rolled to a reluctant stop in her usual place just outside, she realised that Crowley must have phoned ahead, because Aziraphale was waiting for them.

Crowley already had the Bentley’s door open before she’d fully stopped, and she had to switch off the ignition herself as Crowley hastened around her bonnet, stumbling slightly as he moved towards Aziraphale.

“Crowley, I—” Aziraphale began as he stepped forward, wringing his hands together, and then he broke off as he saw the state Crowley was in, the trauma and stress and sheer _damage_ the endless war had done to him.

“A—angel,” Crowley stammered in relief, his voice cracking as he made a beeline for Aziraphale.

And then Aziraphale—for the first time the Bentley had ever seen—didn’t dither and tell Crowley he should leave, but instead met him with arms wide open.

Crowley collapsed into Aziraphale’s embrace, looking very much like he needed it, and he began to shake as Aziraphale pulled him close.

“Oh, my dear, I’ve got you,” Aziraphale murmured. “It’s all over.”

And as the two of them stood there, silently reassuring themselves through sheer proximity that they had managed to survive the terrible war, the Bentley reflected that she might have passed judgement on Aziraphale a little too soon.

  
  


__________

1. Well. The only one that mattered, at least.

2. And sometimes into other dimensions entirely, where they were never seen nor heard from ever again.

3. The Bentley, while still a young vehicle, had so far only been exposed to the rather modest musical tastes of the 1920s and the equally modest motorway signage, and had yet to broaden her understanding of interpersonal relationships.

4. In all honesty, Crowley barely even knew what petrol was.

5. Again, modest musical tastes.

6. Had the Bentley given it much thought, she would have supposed that this had been Crowley’s intended destination all along, and that the panic attack had been an unfortunate occurrence en route. In truth, however, Crowley had felt it coming on in his flat, shortly after he had received the news from Hell (via his newly installed cathode-ray tube electronic television) that he would be expected to report for yet another war. But Crowley spent so little time in his flat, and it was so stark and barren—admittedly by his own design—that he couldn’t bear the thought of breaking down there, trapped between those cold white walls. He could have gone directly to Aziraphale, of course—the angel would have certainly comforted him—but he hated the idea of Aziraphale seeing him like this, teetering on the edge of a full-scale breakdown and pushed there by something so mundane as the news of another human war. So he’d fled to the only other place he’d ever felt truly safe and at home, and to the only other soul who’d ever shown him a shred of kindness.

7. And, truly, those reasons were a lot more superficial than they appeared; had Hell actually bothered to look into the Nazi policies in any depth, Crowley would have received a millennium’s worth of commendations, as well as a very good deal of infernal street cred.

8. Crowley had only been able to convince himself to follow his infernal orders to go to war by promising himself that, this time, he would be ensconced in an office somewhere far from all the actual fighting and dying.

9. It had not yet occurred to the Bentley that Crowley might be fundamentally different from any of the hundreds of pedestrians that regularly clogged the pavements of London and Berlin. Sure, she knew that he was the only one capable of instilling her with renewed spirit, and had gathered that miracles weren’t exactly a hot commodity, but the concept of discorporation was completely alien to her.


	2. The Story So Far (Part II)

It was in the late 1950s that the Bentley realised with a fair bit of worry that she was getting on in years. No one had been paying any attention to automotive styles during the war, but now that things were going back to normal it was painfully obvious that the Bentley wasn’t the brilliant young thing she used to be. Big wings[1] were quickly going out of style—though the Rolls Royce Phantom had kept them, thankfully—and small, streamlined designs were preferred. It wasn’t all looks; though the Bentley had one of the best engines of her year, the newer cars had eight-cylinder fuel-injected engines that hers simply couldn’t compete with in terms of sheer horsepower. There was no two ways about it: she was becoming dated.

She knew that Crowley valued looking cool, and when he spent almost a full minute admiring the sleek white Jag that had pulled up next to her at the Ritz, she had her first serious inkling that her days might be numbered.

Of course, she could hardly ask Crowley as much, or make a case for how she wasn’t really all that old after all—couldn’t do much of anything other than drive as smoothly and reliably as she could, her engine kept in perfect tune by Crowley’s magic.

And, though this fear lingered in her mind for some time, she eventually decided that it was utterly unfounded. Because every time Crowley came up to her and opened her door, she could feel in that first spark of magic the same affection he had felt for her the first time he had traced his fingertips over her bonnet, and she gradually came to understand that Crowley was happy with her just as she was.

⁂

In 1963, the Beatles became a musical phenomenon practically overnight, flooding the radio and introducing the Bentley to a whole new genre of lyrical content. It was sometime in early 1964, as Crowley was quietly singing along to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the way to Aziraphale’s bookshop, that the Bentley began to suspect that the feelings of “friendship” Crowley harboured for Aziraphale might be more of the “She Loves You” variety.

This notion was borne out as Crowley succeeded in tempting Aziraphale into the Bentley for longer and longer periods. Eventually Aziraphale became accustomed to it, and he and Crowley began having conversations during the ride that were more nuanced than the usual.[2]

The Bentley’s understanding of Crowley’s relationship with the grumpy bookshop owner was further improved by Crowley’s sudden interest in attending drive-in films, quite often with Aziraphale in tow. For the first time, the Bentley was able to watch the two of them interact for more than a few greeting or parting moments on the pavement, or during a hair-raising drive.

And, as she listened curiously to their back and forth, she came to realise that, though Aziraphale always started any conversation with a few canned lines about how he ought to not talk to Crowley at all, he didn’t actually _mean_ them. They certainly didn’t seem to bother Crowley in the least, and once this obligatory preamble was over the two of them launched quite cheerfully into their actual discussion.

It was by listening to these parts of their conversations, after the initial pretence of unfriendliness had been hastily left behind, that the Bentley grew to understand that her original judgement of Aziraphale had been fatally flawed from the start. It was crystal clear to her now that, for all of his bluster, Aziraphale really was quite invested in Crowley and whatever their peculiar relationship was. This came as quite a relief to the Bentley, who knew full well how attached Crowley was, and was glad his interest was reciprocated.

Additionally, the Bentley now found herself quite heartily cheering the two of them on.

⁂

Crowley always seemed relatively pleased with the Bentley’s appearance, keeping her gleaming and free from dust, rust, and water spots, and he made his first and only adjustment to her appearance in 1967, when he emerged from a petrol station[3] with a sheet of glossy windscreen transfers.

“Look at these, old girl,” he told her in apparent delight, already starting to peel off the first transfer. “It’s part of an advert for the new James Bond film. It’ll look just like we’ve just escaped from a gunfight! Stellar, huh?”

The Bentley thought this was a rhetorical question, and it took a moment of Crowley looking at her expectantly, one of the small circular transfers clinging to his index finger, for her to realise that he was waiting for her answer.

_“Toot, toot!”_ she agreed. She had never seen a James Bond film, but she’d heard Crowley telling Aziraphale about them in an ecstatic tone of voice, and she liked looking cool as much as Crowley did.

Crowley positively beamed. “Where’d you like them?” He looked down at the transfers again. “Hmm, the back, I think?”

_“Toot, toot!”_

⁂

On a chilly but wonderfully clear evening late in 1975, the Bentley drove[4] Crowley and Aziraphale back to the bookshop after the two of them had gotten completely sloshed at the Ritz for absolutely no good reason. It took the Bentley opening her own doors and tooting the klaxon repeatedly before her two passengers noticed that they’d arrived and drunkenly drew themselves from the car in a tangle of limbs.

The Bentley waited patiently to turn her lights off until they’d made it into the bookshop, Aziraphale hiccupping and clinging to Crowley’s shoulder for support.

Once the bookshop’s windows lit up, the Bentley moved to switch her ignition off, but her attention was caught by the voice of the announcer issuing from her radio.

“—starting now, we have an entire night of nothing but Queen ahead of us! That’s right, a full six hours of the chart-topping rock 'n' roll band coming up right here on BBC Radio 1. First up, a new hit from their latest album: ‘I’m in Love with My Car.’”

The name of the band sounded vaguely familiar to the Bentley, though she couldn’t place it straight away. As she was trying to recall where she’d heard of them, a carefully orchestrated explosion of sound fizzled from her speakers.

_“Oooh, the machine of a dream…”_ Roger Taylor sang.

Well, the Bentley thought to herself, this really wasn’t so bad at all. And, since she doubted Crowley would be needing her anytime soon, she _did _have all night.

⁂

1983 was a good year for music. Crowley would have liked to listen to it.

Unfortunately for him, the Bentley had decided after that starry winter night eight years previously that the only music henceforth allowed to issue from her speakers was that by the beautiful, wonderful, excellent band Queen. Their music was so unlike anything she’d ever heard before, so groundbreaking and fearless, and, above all, it made her feel young and full of life again.[5]

Crowley had taken this rather well—he seemed to quite enjoy the music, actually—but she could tell he was hoping for a bit of variety now and then. Unfortunately, the Bentley had been well and truly converted to this wonderful new religion, and she was not inclined to betray it, no matter how nicely Crowley asked.

Eventually, Crowley must have come to the conclusion that the radio was broken beyond repair or the help of miracles, because he gave up and had it replaced. This was rather insulting to the Bentley, who knew how to work her radio perfectly well, thank you very much, but the worst part was that the new stereo included _a cassette player_.

For the next two weeks, the Bentley grumbled internally while Crowley beamed and listened to his Billy Joel and Bonnie Tyler cassettes in peace.

His delight only lasted a fortnight, though, because that’s how long it took the Bentley to work out how to successfully corrupt the cassettes’ data storage.

And thus “Uptown Girl” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” morphed straight back into “We Will Rock You” and “Bicycle Race.”

Some months later, Aziraphale made an offhanded remark on the drive to the British Museum that he was quite a fan of classical music.

The very next day, Crowley purchased three separate classical music cassettes and squirrelled them away in the back of the glove compartment, beaming to himself all the while.

When Crowley next picked Aziraphale up, a fortnight later, he casually suggested that he pick out some music from the glove compartment.

The Bentley watched smugly as Aziraphale retrieved a Handel cassette from where Crowley had planted it, giving it a look that was both surprised and approving.

“My dear, I didn’t know you were an admirer of Handel!”

“I’m an admirer of a lot of things,” Crowley said smoothly, and the Bentley could hear the pleased, self-congratulatory note in his voice.

After several failed attempts, Aziraphale succeeded in pushing the cassette into the player. Crowley had to reach over to hit the play button when Aziraphale’s random prods failed to produce the intended result.[6]

There was a growing crescendo of sound, and then, at absolutely full volume:

_“FAT-BOTTOMED GIRLS, YOU MAKE THE ROCKIN’ WORLD GO ROUND!”_

⁂

In 1990, there was another war. Except this one was much shorter and of the genuinely apocalyptic variety, and the Bentley was on the absolute front lines. Crowley did his best to preserve her, pouring more magic than the Bentley had even known he’d possessed into her, until she felt herself come completely unmoored from her own engine and frame and tyres, supported solely by the sheer force of Crowley’s will.

It was an extraordinary feeling, being filled to the brim with that much raw power as she surged across the wall of fire that was the M25, but it was also incredibly destructive. One could only blaze that bright for so long, could only fly so close to the sun before crashing like Icarus. It was magnificent…but it also spelled the end of her, and she knew Crowley understood that as well as she did.

She felt it in the power he poured tirelessly into her, coloured by his fear and determination and _regret_, his pain at having to destroy her to save the world.

But the Bentley…if she had to go, she wanted it to be like this, a true hero’s send-off, dutifully carrying her beloved Crowley this one last time to the place he desperately needed to be.

And she did it—she made it all the way to the airbase, burning up her own stored reserves of power to keep herself together as Crowley’s power flagged in his exhaustion. And then Crowley’s strength finally gave out entirely, and everything ended.

**

It hadn’t been like Germany, when she’d felt consciousness slip away from her as a cold fog closed in. No, this had been complete and utter oblivion, the very steel and iron she was housed in giving up the ghost, freeing her spirit once and for all.

She was well and truly gone.

And, then, she wasn’t.

A touch on her bonnet: always there, always that gentle touch of greeting, of deep familiarity and affection. Then another on her door, and finally two familiar hands on her steering wheel, followed by a rush of magic, rousing the Bentley as unexpectedly as if Crowley had reached across the veil between the worlds and scooped her up from the face of the deep itself.

The Bentley’s engine stuttered, coughed, and finally purred to life, her awareness coming back in stages, like a computer starting up after a reboot.

“There you are, old girl,” Crowley said softly, his voice warm but hesitant. “Are you…still with me?”

The Bentley didn’t immediately register Crowley’s words, just taking in the fact that she was still, somehow, enjoying existence. She did a quick check of her systems, but everything appeared to be in good working order: her engine back in one piece, frame intact, all the electronics appearing operable. She was still taking stock when she finally processed what Crowley had said.

Crowley ran a thumb nervously over her steering wheel. “Adam miracled back Aziraphale’s bookshop, good as new—well, almost—but…how about you? Still my best girl?” Despite the hint of a smile in his last words, she could hear the trepidation in his voice, feel the hesitation of his hands on her steering wheel.

_“Toot, toot!”_ the Bentley reassured him. Then she had a flash of insight, and she switched her attention to the motherboard of her radio, which she had long ago commandeered for the purpose of holding a full and complete record of Queen’s many hits.[7]

The radio clicked on, and Freddie Mercury’s voice streamed from it: _“You’re the best friend that I ever had.”_

Crowley stared at her radio for a moment, and then he let out a huff of breath, and then another, and finally he grinned, leaning his head back against the headrest.

“Haven’t changed a bit,” he said as he gave the steering wheel a fond pat, and the Bentley could hear the relief in his voice.

⁂

In the years following the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, the Bentley noticed a marked change in Crowley’s behaviour. He spent more time with Aziraphale, of course, but he also seemed simultaneously both more and less stressed, smiling more freely but also spending inordinate amounts of time fiddling nervously with his hair in the Bentley’s mirrors. Part of this could certainly be chalked up to Hell’s cessation of communication,[8] but it wasn’t until the spring of 1995 that the Bentley realised that Crowley was, in a word, trying to _woo_ Aziraphale.

And quite poorly, too.

He was clearly quite keen on the idea—and the Bentley imagined that Aziraphale would be plenty receptive, were the subject properly broached—but Crowley’s courage always seemed to falter at the last moment, so the Bentley decided to do him a solid and help a friend out.

“I was thinking the Ritz,” Aziraphale said brightly as he climbed into the Bentley, taking care to tuck the hem of his coat in after himself, so it wouldn’t catch in the door.

“Already booked,” Crowley replied with his regular cheerfulness, though the Bentley could hear a faint hint of nervousness in his voice.[9]

“Excellent,” Aziraphale said, making himself comfortable and then giving Crowley an almost shy smile.

_Good grief_, the Bentley thought to herself, and flipped the radio on.

_“Hey, boy, where’d you get it from? Hey, boy, where did you go?”_

Crowley put the Bentley in gear with a thought and pulled out into the road. He hadn’t noticed the choice of song yet.

_“I learned my passion in the good old-fashioned school of lover boys,”_ Freddie Mercury sang.

Aziraphale blinked and looked over at the radio in mild surprise. Then he smiled faintly, shot Crowley a coy glance, and turned his attention to the Soho buildings flashing past outside. The Bentley contented herself with admiring Brian May’s guitar solo.

_“Dining at the Ritz, we’ll meet at nine—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—precisely. I will pay the bill, you taste the wine.”_

With no warning, Crowley choked and slammed on the brakes, his grip doubling on the steering wheel as the Bentley stuttered to a near-halt.

_“Driving back in style in my saloon will do quite nicely. Just take me back to yours, that will be fine!”_

The Bentley watched smugly as Crowley—the tips of his ears already beginning to redden—hastily pulled his foot off the brake and nervously cleared his throat. He shot Aziraphale a quick, sideways glance as he nudged the Bentley’s throttle lever upwards, sending them rolling forward again.

Aziraphale made a show of looking outside, humming along absentmindedly as though he hadn’t noticed the abrupt change in velocity.

Crowley’s hand darted to the radio, and he hastily tried switching the station.

_Oh, Crowley. You know better than that, surely?_ the Bentley thought to herself sweetly.

_ “Oooh, love—there he goes again!—That’s my good old-fashioned lover boy—”_

Next, Crowley hastily tried to turn the volume all the way down. The Bentley increased it by two clicks.

Evidently realizing he was fighting a losing battle, Crowley gave up and loudly cleared his throat instead. “So, uh…should be good cream cakes at the Ritz.”

“Mm–hmm,” Aziraphale agreed.

_“Ooooh, what you doing tonight? Oooh, hey, boy!”_

“And…er…sandwiches.” Crowley’s voice was dwindling.

“Mm.”

_“Everything’s all right, just hold on tight. That’s because I’m a good old-fashioned (fashioned) lover boy!”_

Crowley’s ears stayed red the entire trip to the Ritz.

They were the same colour three weeks later, when the Bentley’s egging finally convinced Crowley that the metaphorical cat was already very much out of the bag, and he managed to work up the courage to tell Aziraphale, in a series of halting and nervous statements, just what he meant to him.

__________

1. That’s fenders, for Americans.

2. Which tended to go something like this:  
Crowley: So I was thinking maybe—  
Aziraphale: DON’T HIT THAT PEDESTRIAN.  
Crowley: *swerving without bothering to look at the road* Yes, but, well—  
Aziraphale: THIS IS A ONE-WAY GOING THE OTHER WAY DID YOU EVEN LOOK AT THAT SIGN.

3. It took a bit of puzzling on the Bentley’s part for her to work out what the peculiar place was for, as she had no more of an idea what petrol was than Crowley did.

4. While usually Crowley would be the one doing the actual driving, in this instance he just sat down in the driver’s seat and utterly forgot what he was doing, so the Bentley took it upon herself to retrace the familiar route while Crowley slouched against Aziraphale and laughed silently.

5. Semi-sentient cars, it turns out, aren’t immune to mid-life crises.

6. Though they did succeed in turning the volume up far beyond regular listening levels, much to the Bentley’s delight.

7. Which is to say, every Queen song ever produced.

8. The Bentley had always deeply resented Hell for seizing control of her speakers like she was a mere mortal device, and had shared Crowley’s relief at being finally rid of them.

9. This telltale tremor had lately been appearing literally every time Crowley saw Aziraphale, so the Bentley’s working theory was that Crowley was convinced that one of these times Aziraphale would look at him and just _see_ all the hopeful lovesickness oozing out of him, and then it would all Go Down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this just ended up being, like, a bunch of headcanons, but there’s an actual story coming in the next chapter, I swear! And this backstory will be relevant, I promise!


	3. The Queen Dilemma

2014 (the present)[1]

As great of a musical phenomenon as Queen is, there is only so much Queen a body can take before they start losing their sanity. Crowley was rapidly approaching this limit.

“I mean, it’s _all the time,”_ Crowley complained, twisting his head so he could see Aziraphale around his own feet, which he’d crossed at the ankle on top of the counter in Aziraphale’s bookshop. “There’s only so much ‘Radio Ga Ga’ I can listen to before _I_ go gaga.”

“I’m sure it’s not all that bad,” Aziraphale said reasonably from where he was paging through a book he’d plucked from a nearby box of new arrivals.

“I honestly don’t know how you haven’t noticed; it’s _very obvious_,” Crowley continued. “You can’t have _literally_ thought that that was Handel and the Velvet Underground all this time, could you?”

“I don’t think it’s my place to criticize your car’s musical tastes, my dear,” Aziraphale said demurely, not answering Crowley’s question.

Crowley grumbled to himself, watching Aziraphale flip further through the book and then pause to inspect its binding.

“Yeah, well, it’s _my_ car, right? Should play what _I_ want to listen to.”

Aziraphale made a noncommittal noise, frowning at the book’s silk headbands.

Crowley brooded for a few moments longer, and then he sighed and moved to stand, pulling his feet from their spot propped up on the counter. “Come on, angel, let’s go to Kew. Get some fresh air.”

Aziraphale brightened at the suggestion, and a few minutes later they were making their way outside, Aziraphale conscientiously locking the shop behind them and turning the sign to CLOSED.[2]

The drive to Kew Gardens was uneventful, though the Bentley insisted on alternating between “A Kind of Magic” and “Princes of the Universe” for the entire trip. Crowley scowled unceasingly at the radio.

The gardens were as beautiful as usual, the orchids in full bloom and the air unusually chilly with the promise of the coming autumn.

They had just returned to the Bentley for the trip back to the bookshop[3] when Aziraphale suddenly realised he had forgotten his scarf in the orangery. Crowley volunteered to run back and fetch it, and when he returned with the wayward, offensively tartan scarf in his hand, he found Aziraphale waiting in the car, listening to the radio.

“Here you go,” Crowley said, opening the door and tossing Aziraphale his scarf as he got in.

Aziraphale caught it clumsily, visibly distracted as he blinked at the radio in surprise. It was playing “Under Pressure.”

“What’s the matter?” Crowley asked as he started the Bentley, taking a moment to glance fondly at the photograph of himself and Aziraphale he’d pasted to the edge of the dash.[4]

“You know, my dear, I think you might be at least partially mistaken,” Aziraphale said carefully as Crowley put the Bentley in gear and began backing them out of their parking spot.

“How’s that?” Crowley asked, shifting the Bentley into first with a thought and sending them rolling towards the main road.

“Unless I’m very much mistaken, or unless Queen ever released a version of Beethoven’s Fifth, this car does indeed play things other than Queen.”

Crowley hit the brakes so hard he accidentally yielded to cross-traffic. He stared at Aziraphale in disbelief. “You’re serious? You heard _this car_ play something _other than Queen?”_

Aziraphale gave him a slightly puzzled look. “Yes, while I was waiting for you. Though it…” He frowned. “It switched back when you came in.”

Crowley drew a deep breath and glared at the dashboard. “You’re on _thin ice here_, you hear me?”

⁂

Crowley was not having a good day.

If he was honest with himself, he’d been in a bit of a foul mood all week, due largely to a lengthy string of routine bad luck: he’d tripped on a bit of pavement early in the week and collided quite hard with the edge of a telephone box in broad daylight; he’d flipped on the telly to try to feel better and had instead ended up watching an incredibly anxiety-inducing news segment about growing unrest in Crimea and the Middle East; he’d tried to buy a chocolate-covered waffle from a Dutch café but had been told they were out; and then, to top it all off, one of his favourite plants had taken quite a turn for the worse, and he was clueless as to why. Even the weather was against him: the last couple of days had been overcast, alternating between unpleasant drizzles and chilly gusts. And the cherry on top was that Aziraphale had been away all week at a series of back-to-back antique book conventions in America, depriving Crowley of the one thing that never failed to brighten his day at least a little.

The only small semblance of relief he’d been able to find was from his shiny, capitalist-friendly iPhone; he’d had a brainwave earlier in the week and had filled iTunes with all of his favourite new music. It had done wonders to help him calm down, smoothing out his frazzled nerves and helping him focus on the fact that the weather was finally projected to clear up, and that Aziraphale had come home yesterday evening.

Unfortunately, Aziraphale’s presence hadn’t magically solved all of Crowley’s problems, and Crowley had spent most of the previous night lying awake worrying about his plants. He’d been just about to resign himself to a sleepless night—albeit one nestled comfortably by Aziraphale’s side—when he’d hit upon the thought that perhaps his zinnia was ailing because itwas worried about the peony.

After having failed to produce a single flower, Crowley had taken the peony away with his usual showy ritual, leaving the remaining plants quivering in fear. The zinnia had sat right beside the peony, though, so it was possible that it had grown attached, or else that the peony’s removal had simply driven home to the zinnia how easily it could have been selected instead. So, it followed that if Crowley showed the zinnia that the peony was all right (Crowley was a demon, not a murderer, and he’d simply relocated the underperforming plant to a special garden in St James’s Park), it would brighten up.

And so Crowley had woken early the next day, gently kissed Aziraphale good morning, and taken the Bentley to St James’s. It was early on a Sunday, so there weren’t many people around, though the handful he passed did give him peculiar looks as he carried the potted zinnia all the way through the park.

It didn’t take him long to reach the small garden he tended there, tucked away behind the old bird keeper’s lodge that now served as the office of the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust.

He located the peony easily and set the zinnia’s pot on the ground next to it, so it could see that the peony was still alive and, in fact, doing much better than before. After a moment’s consideration, Crowley decided that he’d better leave the zinnia there all day, to give it plenty of time to come to terms with the peony’s continued existence and the magnitude of Crowley’s rather cruel charade.

Crowley thought the exercise had gone reasonably well,[5] and he allowed himself to speculate that things might be looking up. He was still terribly wound up, but Aziraphale was waiting for him at the bookshop and, if he wasn’t very much mistaken, he could even see a hint of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Feeling suddenly a little better, Crowley started back towards the Bentley, telling himself that his week of misfortunes was behind him.

_I’d trade my soul for a wish, pennies and dimes for a kiss_, he hummed to himself, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets as he strolled through the park. _Something, something—I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe._

It was right about then that Crowley realised that neither of his hands, still in his trouser pockets, had encountered his mobile. But it was no matter; he’d had it earlier, so he must have just left it in the car.

Crowley reached the Bentley and got in, unlocking the doors with a thought and starting the engine with another. His iPhone was lying on the passenger seat right where he’d left it, the aux cord trailing from the headphone jack to the port Crowley had miracled into existence beside the Bentley’s cassette player. Crowley scooped his mobile off the seat, tapped in the passcode,[6] navigated to the iTunes app, and scrolled through the newest songs he’d added.

He clicked on “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit.[7]

He sat back in the driver’s seat, closing his eyes briefly and waiting for the music to wash over him, repeating to himself in his head that everything was okay and this string of bad days was over.

_“Another one bites the dust! Hey—I’m gonna get you too!”_

Crowley’s eyes flicked open in annoyance, and he leaned forward to make sure the aux cord was properly connected. It was, and even unplugging it and plugging it back in did no good.

Crowley hissed under his breath in frustration and jabbed at another song on his playlist, in case that would produce better results.

Immediately, the song changed:

_“Mama, life had just begun…”_

A dreadful thought occurred to Crowley.

“No, no, no,” he muttered, tearing the iPhone from the aux cord and pushing the Bentley’s door open. He jumped out of the car and sprinted a few metres away, and then a few more, staring at his mobile in horror. Every time he selected a song, music began playing directly from the phone’s speakers, but never the song he selected.

The awful truth came to him then, with all the gentleness of the rock slung at Goliath: the Bentley had corrupted his iTunes playlist. Every. Single. Song. …was now by Queen.

_“Shit.”_ Crowley jabbed at the phone one last time and the music paused, the silence almost deafening. And then, in a single second, all of Crowley’s tenuous hopes about today being a good day imploded, all of the week’s vexations coming back to him at once. “Shit!”

He felt tears of frustration spring to his eyes. It had taken a long time to set up that playlist, to finally be able to relax with the songs that _he_ wanted to listen to—and that—that _damn car_—

Crowley’s gaze roved to the Bentley, and he advanced on it, fingers clenched around the irreversibly corrupted iPhone.

“You—now—you listen to me,” Crowley growled at the Bentley, jabbing at her with the hand clutching the iPhone. “You belong to _me_, and I _ssswear,_ all I want to do is listen to my own _damn music_ for some _peaccce of bloody mind,_ and if you insssist on playing nothing but _blasted Queen_, then I _will_ take an Uber,[8] ssso help me.”

The Bentley locked her doors with an audible click.

“Yeah? Well…_sssame_,” Crowley hissed, taking a step closer and then two back. “I don’t need you. There are lots—_lotsss_ of cars out there; I’ll find one with better mannersss!”

The Bentley flashed her lights coldly at Crowley, but he’d already turned away, drawing quick, irritated breaths. All of his previous optimism about the day had evaporated, and he stormed along the pavement bordering St James’s, flexing his fingers and hissing under his breath.

The park was a beautifully serene place, though, and by the time Crowley had completed a circuit most of his anger had worn off, leaving him feeling empty and hollow. Exhausted, he sank onto a nearby bench, ignoring the ducks searching for crumbs near the water’s edge.

He let himself cool off further, taking deep breaths and reminding himself that none of the relatively minor inconveniences he’d faced recently warranted this sort of behaviour. After about ten minutes, he turned his thoughts reluctantly to his shouting match[9] with the Bentley and began to feel quite bad about it. He’d been a bit short with her these last few months, ever since the music issue had begun to seriously annoy him, but she certainly didn’t deserve to be shouted at. She was a good car—truly, the _best_ of cars—and they’d been through a lot together. He should be able to tolerate some Queen.

Crowley sat there on the bench for a while longer, letting the regular chatter of the ducks and geese and squirrels soothe him, and then he stood and walked slowly back to where he’d left the Bentley, intending on apologising and then heading straight back to the bookshop for some much-needed R&R with Aziraphale.

But when he reached the stretch of kerb where he was certain he had left the Bentley, he could find neither hide nor hair of her.[10]

Upon reflection, Crowley decided miserably that he probably should have expected this. The Bentley was not without pride, and she must have been deeply insulted by Crowley’s words. She’d likely gone off in a huff, but she’d certainly return within the hour, as Crowley himself had come back after having calmed down. She knew that the two of them belonged together as well as he did, even if he hadn’t been expressing it very well lately, and she’d remember that once she’d had a chance to blow off some steam.

So Crowley miracled a bench into existence right there, only a few metres from the edge of the road, and sat down to wait for his beloved car to come back to him.

⁂

The Bentley sped through the London streets in excess of the speed limit, fuming silently. Then she realised that she didn’t have Crowley there to move the pedestrians and other cars out of the way for her, and she reluctantly slowed to safer speeds.

She quickly grew frustrated at being forced to adopt the sluggish speed of the other traffic, though, so she headed out of the city at the first available opportunity, speeding west into the suburbs and up the A40 until she reached Wembley.

It was about then that she’d calmed down enough to wonder what she was doing. Crowley might have spoken harshly to her, but it wasn’t like she could run from him forever and, even if she could, she didn’t want to. Crowley almost certainly hadn’t meant what he’d said; she knew that he tended to lash out when emotions were running high, and he’d certainly seemed ill at ease lately. Besides, she knew Crowley. They had a long history together, and one angry outburst didn’t erase decades of mutual affection and respect.

Still, he’d never shouted at her before, and she didn’t appreciate it one bit. She recalled Crowley’s remark about finding a ‘better-mannered car’ with particular bitterness, as nearly every action she’d ever taken of her own free will had been in Crowley’s best interests.

A little peeved, the Bentley took the next exit from the motorway and began driving aimlessly through Wembley, knowing she’d be heading back to St James’s soon but unwilling to turn back just yet. Crowley could sit and have a good think about how he had treated her before she graced him with her presence again.

So, when the Bentley passed a large car park, she turned in. The place was absolutely packed, the sun gleaming off the rows and rows of compact saloons and hatchbacks. The Bentley slowed to a crawl, surprised at the lack of available parking spots. There must be some sort of event happening nearby.

After some searching, she spied an available spot ahead of her, near the base of some sort of sign. She pulled into it and slowed to a stop beside a bright red convertible with a piece of paper taped to the inside of its windscreen.

The Bentley turned off her ignition, not intending on staying long but needing a bit more time to lick her wounds. It was quite peaceful sitting there, though, the noise of the nearby motorway lulling her.

And then, without quite knowing when, she fell soundly asleep.

⁂

When the Bentley hadn’t come back after a solid two hours of waiting, Crowley began to get properly worried. The traffic had picked up a lot—as it always did in London—but, though literally thousands of cars, lorries, and buses had passed in front of Crowley’s miracled bench, there was no sign of _his._

It was nearing noon when Crowley, too anxious to continue sitting there idly, decided to walk back to the bookshop in case the Bentley had gone there. It was a sensible thing to do, he reassured himself fretfully. Aziraphale was probably with her right now, listening to her play one of Mozart’s symphonies just to get on Crowley’s nerves.

So Crowley walked slowly back to Soho, glancing over his shoulder every dozen metres in case the Bentley should materialise beside him, imagining that every tread of tyres on asphalt was hers.

But the walk back to Soho was uneventful, and when Crowley rounded the corner and saw Aziraphale’s bookshop and the completely vacant stretch of kerb in front of it, he felt his hopes plummet. He stood there on the corner for a long moment, people streaming past him, and wondered if he ought to go tell Aziraphale what had happened.

He knew he should, and that Aziraphale would help him, but, well…it was his own fault that he’d yelled at the Bentley, and it had been such a silly thing to get worked up over in the first place, and he didn’t want Aziraphale to think ill of him because of it. Besides, Crowley had been the one to screw this up, and he wanted to at least try to fix it himself.

And for another thing, tracking a single vehicle through twenty-first century London was an endeavour that involved some knowledge of modern technology, and in that regard Aziraphale was still several decades behind the curve.

So Crowley turned and began walking back through Soho, going over the problem worriedly in his mind.

Crowley’s first thought was that perhaps the police had confiscated the Bentley. If she drove anything like Crowley did, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that she had been impounded for dangerous and reckless motoring.

He found a quiet side street and called the Ministry of Transportation, inquiring after any vintage vehicles they had obtained in the last few hours. The constable he spoke with told him that nothing in their records matched his description, but he convinced her to give him the numbers of the city’s pounds and proceeded to call each one individually, asking if they’d picked up a vintage Bentley.

None of them had, and Crowley struggled to reassure himself that this wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm. There was still a good chance that the Bentley would simply turn up at the bookshop in the next few hours.

But, despite himself, Crowley couldn’t shake the feeling that she wouldn’t have left him for this long, and that something must be wrong.

⁂

Radcliffe Abernathy Wentworth, CEO, heir, sole proprietor, and well-known automotive collector, was on his way back to Surrey after enjoying a spot of lunch with a business partner in Wembley when he drove past the TrustUs Used Car Centre off the A40 and saw a truly magnificent vintage Bentley.

He hit the brakes on his Porsche so swiftly that he was almost rear-ended by the BMW behind him. Then, without bothering to see if he was cutting anyone off, he sped across two lanes of traffic and pulled into the car centre.

WEEKEND DEAL'S, proclaimed a poorly printed lawn sign.

Radcliffe ignored this trapping of the plebes, driving down the narrow aisles of parked cars and towards the base of the centre’s sign. The dealership’s finest cars had been arranged there in a spot of honour, elevated slightly and especially visible from the roadway.

He put the Porsche in park and got out, striding right past the red Tesla convertible and the yellow Chevrolet Camaro with obnoxiously tacky striping and towards the vehicle that had so drawn his eye from the road.

The Bentley was a truly remarkable specimen, in what appeared to be almost mint condition. Not a single dent marred her gleaming black bodywork, and she appeared to have avoided any rust as well.[11] He approached the driver’s side door and peered inside, greedily taking in the beautiful upholstery. To his distaste, he saw that someone had mounted a modern stereo to the underside of the dash (though, judging from the horrendously outdated car phone, it must have been some decades ago), and he reassured himself with the thought that he could have these anachronisms just as easily ripped out.

The vehicle was in simply too good of condition to pass up unless the dealership wanted a truly exorbitant price for it. Radcliffe took a step back and glanced over the windscreen, but there was no informational sheet pasted to it, as there was on the nearby Tesla and Chevy.

After a few more moments of looking over the majestic vehicle, Radcliffe turned on his heel until he spotted the doors to the dealership’s office. Already, he was mentally writing out the cheque.

__________

1. It may take some imagining, I know, but do try to cast your mind back to this distant epoch of human history.

2. In fact, both sides of the sign read CLOSED, and had for some time now, but Aziraphale flipped it over anyway, because he liked doing it.

3. Crowley had sold his flat over a decade ago, opting instead to move in entirely with Aziraphale. He would be lying to himself if he said that he hadn’t been looking forward to the move immensely, not least of all because it was awfully lonely at his flat, and because the bookshop always had good places to curl up and take a nap in.

4. It was one of the first photos Crowley had ever had developed from the nearly 1-megapixel digital camera (complete with built-in LCD display!) he’d proudly bought in 2001. The technology had seemed quite impressive at the time, but already it had become almost completely obsolete. Still, there was something about the permanence of a physical photograph that appealed to Crowley, despite the fact that developing digital photos seemed to have gone out of fashion.

5. In fact, the entire affair with the zinnia had put him so on edge that he was now thinking of abandoning the entire pretense of tossing the plants out at all. He’d long since abdicated his hellish duties, and, anyway, it had been difficult to terrorise the plants properly ever since he’d moved in with Aziraphale, since the angel continually fawned over them whenever Crowley wasn’t looking.

6. 4004, naturally.

7. When left to his own devices, Crowley does indeed have the musical preferences of a sixteen-year-old girl, due in large part to the fact that every sappy song he hears reminds him fondly of Aziraphale.

8. An empty threat, really, given that Uber hadn’t expanded into London yet, but Crowley’s knowledge of the company extended only so far as the thirty-second news clip he’d heard on the radio a few weeks ago.

9. “Match” being a bit generous, given the Bentley’s limited vocal range.

10. Er…neither gasket nor grille, neither boot nor bonnet.

11. No mean feat in a climate as wet and salty as Britain’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to state for the record that I do not endorse Crowley’s attitude re: Queen.


	4. For Sale (Not By Owner)

The Bentley was jolted very abruptly back to consciousness when she felt someone jab a key into her ignition.

She could only watch indignantly for a moment as she felt the ignition spark retarded, the fuel rod pumped, and the two magneto switches depressed. A moment later, she felt her engine start against her will. It was about then that she fully registered that someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, and that person was most decidedly not Crowley.

“Beautiful sound!” crowed the strange man sitting in Crowley’s spot, adjusting the spark timing to keep the Bentley at an idle and addressing his words to a slightly overweight, nervous-looking man in a suit and tie standing just outside her ajar door.

The Bentley was still trying to parse the situation when the intruder in the driver’s seat reached over the top of her door, put the handbrake on, and got out of the car, tugging something from his jacket pocket as he did so.

The Bentley tried to forcibly turn her ignition off, tried to free herself from the handbrake, but she was utterly unfamiliar with both, as Crowley had never once bothered to use either.

“There,” the unwelcome stranger said, signing a small slip of paper with a flourish and handing it to the other man. “It won’t bounce, I assure you.”

“I—er—I really can’t—” the man began, thumbing the slip of paper in his hands nervously, but the brigand spoke over him.

“Forget it ever happened.” He paused. “Unless you’d like me to phone my lawyers?” Though his tone was light, the Bentley could hear the threat lacing his words. The man in the suit and tie must have heard it too, because he paled a little.

“Uh, no, no, no problem here, Mr Wentworth, sir,” the man said quickly, giving him an over-practised smile.

“Well, there we are, then,” the ruffian Wentworth replied in a self-satisfied tone. “I’ll send someone along for the Porsche.” He turned back to the Bentley and took a few steps alongside her, evidently admiring his new prize. Then he paused, his eyes latching onto something near the Bentley’s rear wheels. In her wing mirror, the Bentley saw his lips thin disapprovingly.

“What’s this…?” Wentworth muttered, reaching over and beginning to dig his nails under one of the James Bond bullet hole transfers Crowley had placed so proudly on her petrol tank and rear bodywork nearly fifty years ago.

In a matter of seconds, Wentworth had peeled one of them off and cast it to the ground in disgust, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together as though he had just touched something particularly foul.

The Bentley was seized with a sudden burst of anger, and she shifted herself into reverse, fully intending on quitting this place and this foul villain as soon as automotively possible. But when she tried to propel herself backwards, she felt her wheels lock, the unfamiliar handbrake arresting her movement.

She struggled fruitlessly with her gearbox as she felt Wentworth peel the rest of the bullet hole transfers from her bodywork and cast them to the ground like he was discarding flakes of peel from a particularly ripe orange.

When he was done, he strolled back to the driver’s door, making sure his leather Balmorals didn’t step on anything too filthy, and got in.

_Oh, you’d better stop right there,_ the Bentley thought furiously.

The moment Wentworth pushed forward the handbrake, the Bentley threw the throttle lever all the way up and sent them shooting backwards so swiftly her tyres squealed.

But Wentworth was quick, and he hit the brakes before the Bentley could run straight into the row of Fords parked behind her.

“Easy now,” Wentworth said sternly. “Must have bumped the throttle.”

The Bentley flipped on the stereo. _“You’re such a dirty louse; go get outta my house!”_

Wentworth wrinkled his nose but didn’t deign to comment.

When he put her in first gear and lifted his foot from the brake, the Bentley again tried to immediately take off, intending on shaking this unwelcome marauder like a horse might an unwanted rider, but Wentworth’s grip on the steering wheel was firm, and he seemed to chalk up the Bentley’s efforts to repel him to some sort of mechanical fault.

“We’ll get that fixed up in no time,” Wentworth said under his breath as he pulled the protesting Bentley out onto the main road.

She didn’t have much longer to struggle, because only moments later they were pulling into the petrol station across the road. When the Bentley realised what Wentworth intended to do next, she jerked the steering wheel away as hard as she could, balking at the idea of consuming something as foul as petrol.[1]

But then Wentworth jerked the wheel back the other way, swearing slightly as he did so, and drew her alongside the nearest pump. He put her in neutral and flipped the key back, killing her engine.

This series of jolting manoeuvres had dislodged the small photograph of Crowley and Aziraphale pasted to the dash, and the Bentley watched in horror as Wentworth’s gaze zeroed in on it. He tore it from the dash and surveyed the photo for a moment, expression unreadable.

The Bentley honked angrily, struggling to restart her ignition with the key in the off position.

Wentworth ignored her, instead shrugging and tossing the cherished photo to the Bentley’s floor, where it fluttered into the passenger footwell and landed facedown.

The Bentley was seething with anger as Wentworth got out, and she wasted no time in turning her entire attention to her ignition. She was still struggling with it when Wentworth walked around to her rear, where most cars would have a boot, and pried her fuel cap open. She winced as she felt petrol begin to splash down into her fuel tank, its pungent odour a little disorienting.

The entire sensation was so distracting that the Bentley found it difficult to concentrate for the first few minutes after Wentworth started her again, preoccupied with the great deal of proper internal combustion happening in her engine.

By the time she was feeling well enough to turn her attention back to the despicable Wentworth, they were already speeding down the A406, bound for some unknown destination in the south of England.

She tried to wrest control back, determined to fight this knave every mile that took her further from Crowley, but, with the key firmly lodged in the ignition, she felt hopelessly locked out.

Driving with Crowley was always such a genuine pleasure, because it truly was that—driving _with_ Crowley. Since it was his magic that flowed through her, and since Crowley rarely dictated so much as he suggested, she had as much control as he did, the two of them acting in well-practised tandem.[2]

But Wentworth wasn’t Crowley, wasn’t anywhere remotely in the neighbourhood of being even a little, faintly, like a blind man’s description of Crowley, and she resented him deeply. Every forceful gear shift and adjustment of the spark timing was a demand she could do nothing but comply with, feeling trapped in her own frame in a way she’d never felt with Crowley.

As they sped down the A406, the Bentley continued her efforts to resist, but she soon resigned herself to the fact that there wasn’t much she could do at road speeds that wasn’t liable to end with her sprawled in a pile of steel on the roadside. Instead, she restrained herself to playing the ending bars of “Seven Seas of Rhye”[3] on repeat and trying to burn through the infernal petrol as quickly as physically possible.

In this wretched state, her thoughts turned hopefully to Crowley. He must have realised her prolonged absence by now, and she knew he wouldn’t fail to come to her aid. She only hoped that he would be able to find her quickly, before Wentworth took her too far from London and the only place she’d ever truly called home.

⁂

Night was beginning to properly fall, the last traces of dusk stealing the final threads of light from the sky, as Crowley strode worriedly down the aisle of used cars, casting about for any sign of the Bentley.

He’d been searching London all day, going from police pound to car park to scrapyard. Around three in the afternoon, he’d given in and gone to Aziraphale for help, explaining the barest bones of the situation shame-facedly and asking him to phone anyone he thought could help while Crowley went around the city searching in person. Additionally, he’d instructed Aziraphale to keep a close eye on the stretch of kerb outside the shop, in case the Bentley returned there of her own volition. Aziraphale had been terribly understanding about the whole thing, though his entreaties for Crowley to not blame himself too much had gone completely unheeded.

The cabbie Crowley had hired to take him around the city had tentatively mentioned some hours earlier that the odds of finding a single car in London were nearly infinitesimal, but Crowley hadn’t listened to that either. The cabbie had been kind enough not to press the point, though.[4]

An hour and a half ago, Aziraphale had phoned to let him know that the police had called back, and they’d been able to find some footage from a traffic camera of the Bentley on the A40, heading up towards Wembley.

Crowley had immediately adjusted his search area, focussing on areas near to the motorway and hoping the Bentley hadn’t had much reason to venture from the main road.

Half an hour ago, Crowley had had a breakthrough when his hasty inquiry at a well-positioned petrol station revealed that a vintage Bentley had, in fact, stopped there for petrol earlier in the day.

Crowley had demanded details, his heart in his throat, but all the scrappy-looking youth manning the till had to say was that he’d spotted the car through the window and had thought it looked neat.

Crowley had proceeded to pounce on the question of the petrol itself: who had bought it? When exactly? Did they have cameras?

But the youth had no idea, and even when Crowley persuaded him to produce a list of all the day’s transactions, he couldn’t recall which pump or at what time the Bentley had come through. As for cameras, the station did have them, but apparently they had broken some years ago and the station had decided to keep them installed in the hopes that their mere presence would serve as a general deterrent for crime.

Crowley had left the petrol station feeling both invigorated and terribly discouraged, and that was when his eyes had fallen on the used car dealership across the road, and an absolutely horrible thought had occurred to him.

“Looks like they closed over an hour ago!” the cabbie called helpfully to Crowley from the taxi’s window as the cab crawled down the aisle after him, its headlights illuminating the asphalt and throwing Crowley’s shadow far in front of him. Crowley, who could have told him that much from the fact that he’d had to discreetly break the lock on the entrance gates, ignored him.

Crowley continued striding forward, hoping desperately to find—well, _something_. Evidence that _his_ Bentley had been here, at least, and not somebody else’s.

Crowley had just reached the end of the aisle, near the base of the dealership’s sign, when he felt a faint tingle in the air.

He froze and slowly extended a hand in front of himself, feeling for the unusual sensation. A heartbeat later, he felt it again, a faint impression of fading magic accompanied by a burst of familiarity deep in his chest, like calling to like.

“She was here,” Crowley whispered to himself, feeling as though speaking the words aloud might cause them to turn to falsehoods on his tongue. But when he stepped forward cautiously, further into an empty stretch of asphalt between a red convertible and a bright yellow Camaro, the feeling in the air increased, the taste of a magic he recognised as his own.

Crowley felt a lump building in his throat, and he swallowed uncomfortably, looking down at his feet as he let his hand fall back to his side. That was when he saw a faint glimmer of light from the pavement nearby, something small reflecting the headlights of the cab.

Crowley stooped down and carefully plucked a small circle of plastic from the ground. He frowned at it in the half-light, trying to puzzle out what it was. Then it hit him all at once, and Crowley felt all the air knocked from his lungs. Simultaneously, he felt like he’d been slapped.

Resting on his palm was a James Bond bullet hole windscreen transfer.

It only took Crowley a few seconds more to find the remaining transfers, scattered over the ground like discarded petals from the fingers of a spurned lover playing ‘he loves me / he loves me not.’

The story wasn’t a hard one to piece together. The Bentley had fled from Crowley’s cruel words, brought herself to a place where she could find a new owner, and done just that. The youth at the petrol station must have seen the new owner filling her up, or perhaps the dealership staff topping her off before taking her for a test drive.

Either way, she was gone.

“Did you find something?” the cabbie called from the taxi, craning his head out the open window.

Crowley closed his eyes briefly, his fingers closing around the windscreen transfers in his hand, and then he slowly stood up.

He stayed there for a moment more, feeling the faint shimmer of magic in the air again, and then he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He carefully stowed the windscreen transfers in the breast pocket of his suit jacket before turning around.

“I’m done. Now just…take me to Soho, please. I’ll show you where.”

⁂

Radcliffe Wentworth’s estate in Surrey was modest by the standards of estates, consisting of a spacious country house built in the Edwardian style, a four-car attached garage, several small outbuildings (including several more multi-car garages), and a well-kept garden. While there was ample space to house an on-site gardener, housekeeper, butler, cook, and—Lord forbid—a wife and children, Wentworth had opted only for the company of his cars, quarterly earnings reports, and a very expensive security system.

The Bentley’s tyres crunched over the sweeping gravel drive as Wentworth directed her towards the garage, the automatic gates clanking shut behind them.

The Bentley tried to yank the steering wheel out of Wentworth’s hands, but her heart wasn’t really in it. She’d been trying this same tactic intermittently for an hour now, and Wentworth seemed to have chalked it up to a mere steering misalignment.

He rolled her to a stop right outside the garage as he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small gadget. He tapped a button on it, and a moment later one of the garage doors began to rise, the overhead garage light clicking on simultaneously. Every instinct the Bentley possessed told her to bolt, but Wentworth kept her locked into first gear as he urged her forward, towards the garage that would surely become her prison.

The Bentley tried desperately to swerve aside, but Wentworth held her steering wheel firmly, foiling her attempts. Even if she could manage to collide with the edge of the garage, she knew that it might convince Wentworth to park her outside instead, and that was one less barrier to escape.

But she was unable to wrest control back, and soon she was being brought alongside three other cars sitting in the garage’s adjacent spots. She barely paid them any mind, focussing on Wentworth as he put her in neutral, adjusted the spark, and flipped the ignition off.

She felt herself regain control as he pulled the key out, and she poised herself for action, planning to restart her engine and reverse out of the garage at top speed the moment Wentworth left the driver’s seat.

But then, almost as an afterthought, Wentworth reached over her door and pulled the lever for the handbrake back.

The Bentley swore to herself as Wentworth got out, humming slightly and heading towards the side of the garage.

The Bentley struggled frantically with the handbrake, knowing freedom was just a dozen metres behind her but unable to disengage the manual override.

Wentworth reached the door leading from the garage to the house and tapped something on the wall next to it. Behind her, the Bentley heard the sound of the garage door beginning to lower, clanking ominously as it slid along its rails. Wentworth didn’t bother to glance back at her, just pulling open the door and vanishing inside.

Seeing her chance at freedom shrinking with every second the edge of the garage door continued descending, the Bentley tugged even more desperately at the handbrake, begging it to disengage. She was still fighting with it when, behind her, the garage door clanged shut with a horribly final _clunk_.

There was a surprisingly complete silence, and for a few moments the Bentley could only sit there in disbelief, finally giving up her struggle with the handbrake. She was trapped in this malefactor’s garage. She had been completely and utterly _kidnapped_.

Above her, the garage light flickered off, plunging the space into darkness.

This small change in environment was enough to jolt the Bentley out of disbelieving shock and straight into anxiety bordering on outright panic. She was trapped, perhaps indefinitely. She had limited reserves of power, and when they ran out she’d lose consciousness and any hope of escape. She had been abducted by an ill-intentioned interloper, and her last free action had been to storm off in a huff, away from the only soul in the world she truly cared about.[5]

The Bentley felt a pang of guilt, but she hastily pushed it away, knowing there would be time enough for that later. What was important was that she got back to Crowley, or that Crowley found her. The former didn’t seem very likely given her current imprisonment, but she worried that, in regard to the latter, Crowley might not be able to find her here, as he had found her before.

Crowley almost certainly didn’t know where she was, but he hadn’t known where she was in Germany after the war, either, and he had found her then. He was incredibly resourceful and could be very single-minded when he wanted to be. She knew he could find her, if he put his mind to it; the question was, how hard would he try?

The trouble was, this wasn’t like Germany. It was one thing to be stolen and require rescuing, or even to die in the line of duty and be miraculously revived as had happened after the failed Apocalypse, but it was quite another to run off after a fight and expect to still be saved.

The Bentley reflected anxiously on their row again, hoping dearly that Crowley wouldn’t interpret her continued absence as coldness or lack of interest.

In the end, unwilling to stake everything on Crowley being able or even willing to find her, the Bentley decided that she ought to continue trying to take matters into her own hands.[6] She couldn’t move with the handbrake still engaged, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to sit here quietly while the hateful Wentworth spent the night slumbering peacefully next door. If he was going to keep her a prisoner here, then she was going to make him regret it. If she couldn’t liberate herself, then she would convince Wentworth to set her free.

The Bentley flipped her ignition on and cranked the volume on the stereo up as far as it would go.

_ “Ohhhhhh!” _Freddie Mercury sang, his voice rising steadily in volume as it overtook the sound of Brian May’s fantastic guitar solo.

_“I’M BURNING THROUGH THE SKY, YEAH. TWO HUNDRED DEGREES, THAT’S WHY THEY CALL ME MR FAHRENHEIT!”_

_That ought to do it_, the Bentley thought smugly.

__________

1. After all, the Bentley was a proud zero-emissions vehicle. The one time Crowley had needed to buy petrol, so that he could get the free bullet hole transfers, she had found it rather disagreeable. After communicating this to Crowley, he had obligingly miracled the rest away and told her reassuringly that they’d never bother with the stuff again.

2. A side effect of this was that any action Crowley took she could just as easily undo; this had saved them from several collisions with obstacles Crowley hadn’t noticed, and also provided the means with which the Bentley smugly resisted Crowley’s attempts to miracle his precious cassettes back to their original states.

3. The part with all the cross-faded voices chanting eerily in the background, thoroughly ruining Brian May’s wonderful guitar solo.

4. This probably had something to do with the fact that Crowley had told him he could keep the meter running even while Crowley paced frantically around his destinations.

5. While the Bentley had certainly warmed to Aziraphale, and appreciated how utterly head-over-heels for him Crowley was, she had yet to connect with him in the same way she had with Crowley.

6. Tyres.


	5. Breaking Up (Is Hard to Do)

Crowley stepped out of the black cab and onto the stretch of pavement just outside Aziraphale’s bookshop. It was an achingly familiar sight, and he found himself hit by a sudden burst of relief that the shop, and the angel within, were, at least, still here with him. He hadn’t lost everything.

As the cabbie sped away, undoubtedly gleefully daydreaming about what he was going to buy with the hefty fare Crowley had just paid him, Crowley approached the bookshop door.

He was just about to open it when it swung open of its own volition to reveal Aziraphale, who was looking a little worried but relieved to see him.

“Crowley! How’d it…” He trailed off when he saw Crowley’s bleak expression.

And Crowley, who had spent the entire trip back to Soho staring blankly at the back of the cabbie’s seat, complexion ashen, and who now found himself confronted with Aziraphale’s kind and patient countenance, felt his composure and voice crack in equal measure. “…she left me.”

Aziraphale’s expression crumpled into a mixture of horror and sympathy. “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,” he said consolingly, and pulled Crowley into a hug.

This show of comfort was exactly the last thing Crowley’s cool needed just then, and he felt his walls crumble further as he wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and hugged him back.

“Come inside; it’s getting cold,” Aziraphale said, and drew Crowley into the shop. He carefully closed the door after them, the sound of it clicking shut seeming to Crowley like the death knell of his last flagging hopes. “Tell me what happened.”

And so Crowley did, telling Aziraphale with starts and stops how he’d gone all around London searching for his wonderful car everywhere he could think.

“But—but then there was this petrol station in Wembley, and the bloke at the till said that he’d _seen her_, and I—so then we went across the street, where there was a—a _used car centre_—” Crowley couldn’t continue for a moment, choked up, and he took a long drink straight from the bottle of merlot he’d conjured up a few minutes earlier. “…and I—I found _these…_”

Crowley dug around in his inside jacket pocket with slightly shaking fingers and withdrew the James Bond bullet hole transfers. Just seeing them brought a fresh round of tears to his eyes, and he was all too glad when Aziraphale gently took them from him, freeing his hand to return to the merlot.

“Oh, I remember these,” Aziraphale said in surprise, looking down at the transfers. “I’m so sorry, Crowley. Maybe…maybe they fell off by accident?”

_“All_ of them?” Crowley moaned dismally. “In a _used car centre?_ She _left me_, angel, I—I know it when I see it—”

“You don’t know that—”

“I _yelled_ at her,” Crowley admitted all at once, the words stumbling over themselves in their eagerness to leave Crowley’s tongue. “I—I didn’t say before, but in the park—I—I just—I’ve been strung out for days, worried about—about my _plants_, and—and _stupid stuff_—”

Crowley’s fingers tightened around the bottle of merlot, feeling rotten all the way to his core. “I yelled at her about playing Queen, and then I—I said I was going to get a _new car_—” Crowley couldn’t continue, horrified and ashamed and distraught all over again. “Why—why did I say that? She—she left me, angel, and I—I _get it—_”

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale consoled, shifting closer and pulling Crowley into a hug that Crowley felt very much he did not deserve.

“What have I done?” Crowley sobbed into Aziraphale’s shoulder, clinging to the bottle of merlot with one hand, his angel with the other. “She and I—I’ve had her sssince new, you know, and then I—how could I sssay sssomething like that? That I didn’t _want_ her?” Crowley pulled away from Aziraphale’s warmth, pawing at his wet cheeks with the back of a shaking hand and sniffling mightily.

“I—I—do you remember the Second World War, angel? I went back for her, after it all, that’s why I was late getting back here, but I—I couldn’t bear to leave her there, after everything—and they’d just _ruined_ her shocks—”

Apparently at a loss, Aziraphale rubbed Crowley’s back reassuringly.

“And did I ever tell you—back in ’84? I took her to a car show and she did _so well_, there was a race at the end, and she did 0 to 60 in eleven seconds all by herself_—_”

Crowley was so choked up at the memory that he barely registered Aziraphale gently tugging the wine bottle from his hands and replacing it with a well-intentioned pint of ice cream.

⁂

It was somewhere around 1 am when the door to the garage banged open and a very tired and irritated-looking Radcliffe Wentworth strode inside, palms pressed to his ears and a monogrammed silk bathrobe pulled haphazardly around himself.

“Bloody hell…?”

_“DON’T STOP ME—DON’T STOP ME—WAAHHHH!”_ Freddie Mercury shouted at absolutely top volume, the sheer auditory force of Roger Taylor’s drums making the very walls of the garage tremble. The Bentley switched to the next track. _“YOU GOT MUD ON YOUR FACE, YOU BIG DISGRACE.” _The Bentley laid on her klaxon, but the sound was practically lost in the din as she abruptly switched songs again. _“GOD KNOWS, I WANT TO BREAK FREE!”_

Wentworth swore under his breath as he strode up to the Bentley, the sound completely inaudible due to an immense guitar solo courtesy of Brian May. Wentworth came to a stop by her passenger-side door and moved one hand from over his ear long enough to reach down and unscrew the lid of the box set into her running board.

_“SOMEBODY BETTER PUT YOU BACK INTO YOUR PLACE,”_ Freddie Mercury sprang to the Bentley’s defence.

Wentworth lifted the lid off the box and reached downwards, towards the Bentley’s battery, and unscrewed the cable connected to the negative terminal.

_“WE WILL, WE WILL—”_ The radio broke off immediately, the Bentley’s systems failing all at once and the garage plunging back into darkness as the glow from her headlights faded away. The silence was utterly deafening, the enclosed garage still echoing with the memory of Queen’s greatest and loudest hits.

“Bloody electrical fault,” Wentworth grumbled as he took a step back, not bothering to screw the lid of the battery box back down. “Have to get that fixed.”

He started ambling back towards the door to the house, hands pushed into the pockets of his silk bathrobe. As he went, the Bentley heard him mutter under his breath: “I see why your last owner left you.”

Wentworth strode back into the house and pulled the door closed behind him with a sharp snap.

For a long minute, the Bentley could only sit there, feeling suddenly very cold all over. Crowley hadn’t…surely he hadn’t…

_I see why your last owner left you._

The Bentley’s tyres twitched slightly, the sound of the rubber against the cement very loud in the still-ringing silence.

Up until now, she’d been truly just biding her time, knowing she would eventually make a successful bid for escape and get to return home, but the reprobate Wentworth had made a horribly accurate point. What if, when she got home, Crowley no longer wanted her? He’d said as much himself, after all.

And all of a sudden, the Bentley felt a wave of doubt. She’d been assuming all this time that Crowley hadn’t actually meant what he’d said to her in that moment of anger outside St James’s Park, but what if he had? If that moment of anger hadn’t been just that—a mere moment—but the culmination of a longstanding animosity? Or perhaps he had simply lost interest in her, an old car who refused to learn new tricks.

She cast her mind worriedly over the past few months. It did seem to her that Crowley’s affection for her, once so steadfast, had been waning lately, accompanied by a rise in general complaints about her: first, that she played too much Queen; then, that she wasn’t taking corners sharply enough; then, that she was accelerating sluggishly. And then more complaints about Queen, the best and most wonderful band to ever exist, and which the Bentley loved very dearly.

Perhaps his interest in her had been waning for a long time now, and she had simply failed to notice, too unwilling to let herself see the signs.

Profoundly discouraged, the Bentley turned her attention briefly to the other cars in the garage with her, seeking a distraction. Except that her fellow prisoners—a turquoise Lotus, a stately Jag with the top down, and an Aston Martin with custom detailing—were all young, beautiful, and completely in-fashion.

And the Bentley…well, she was nearly a hundred years old. The world was full of brand-new vehicles with traction assist and supercharged engines, and she?—she was just a fossil that had only lasted this long through the power of wishful thinking. For all things there was a season, and perhaps this was the end of hers.

The thought was so disheartening that the Bentley fell utterly silent for a long moment, wondering bleakly if this was the hand that fate had dealt her.

She was old; she was slow; she played too much Queen. Crowley had said as much himself. She knew she wasn’t perfect; she knew she was too proud.

But, even if those things were true, she didn’t _want_ to leave Crowley, didn’t want it all to end—not like this. And she _definitely_ didn’t want to belong to _Wentworth._ Even if she set aside the fact that Crowley’s magic was the only thing she knew of capable of sustaining her, even if she could freely pick another owner, she didn’t _want_ a new owner, no more than she wanted to think about some other car ferrying Crowley from Point A to Point B. She had been Crowley’s for a long time now, and she didn’t want that to change.

The two of them had been near-constant companions for as long as she could remember, accompanying each other through the decades. Crowley had looked after her, and she had been there for Crowley when he needed her; that was the Arrangement they had reached. But if Crowley didn’t need her anymore, didn’t want her…

Then the Bentley pulled herself together bravely and decided that, even if Crowley didn’t want her anymore, _she_ wanted _Crowley_, and maybe it wasn’t too late to change his mind. Maybe she could show him that she wasn’t that old, and wasn’t that slow, and perhaps she could convince him to take her back. At the very least, it was worth it to try, and all she had to lose was her pride.

Set upon this new, if tentative, path, the Bentley hastily turned her attention back to the matter of her escape, fishing around for some method of deception she could use against the brainless Wentworth that would allow her to flee back to Soho, where she belonged.

But there was little she could do with the handbrake engaged, and even less without her battery connected. While she was perfectly capable of running all her functions with or without something so mundane as electricity, it did take a good deal more energy, and she was painfully aware that she had already expended over a third of her reserve trying to force Wentworth off the road, and then to annoy him with Queen, and she would certainly lose more with any further action she took. Even just staying conscious would drain her, until the last spark of magic Crowley had imbued her with faded.

The Bentley began nervously going through her systems, checking for any drains she could minimize and searching for anything that might help her. The petrol tank was still mostly full (ick), the glove compartment was filled with cassettes she had successfully converted to Queen (no help there, sadly), and the radio had fallen silent, as had the cassette player and car phone—

The Bentley froze, and then she felt a frizzle of excitement pass through her. Crowley had had the car phone installed in 1983, at the same time as the updated stereo with the cassette player, telling her all the while that having a phone in your car was the absolutely coolest thing around. Of course, it had taken Crowley several months to figure out how to actually work it, and then, in the thirteen years before it had become entirely obsolete by the invention of a mobile telephone small enough to fit into a pocket, he had only ever used it to call one person.

The Bentley pulled some of her flagging power together and poured it into the car phone, zapping the wires back to life as she dialled the only number that Crowley, in the thirty-one years since its installation, had ever bothered to punch into it.

⁂

“We went to Live Aid together, did you know that?” Crowley hissed brokenly, stabbing his spoon mournfully into the half-eaten pint of black cherry ice cream cradled in his lap. “Well, as much as we could—parked just outside the stadium and listened from there. It was so wonderful.”

He sniffled and twisted the handle of the spoon, freeing a spiral of ice cream. “And she—oh, she was so beautiful, angel. You know that. How am I…? You know no one else’s going to look after her right. Bentleys are touchy cars, have a lot of engine problems when they get older, radiator leaks—”

_Briiiiiing! Briiiiing!_

Crowley broke off in a hiccup, just as disconcerted by the mechanical tone of the phone’s ring as he was by the very presence of the sound. “Isssss that your _phone? _I’tsssss_ ancient.”_ He scrunched up his nose in disapproval, but couldn’t sustain the emotion for long, his mind already flipping back to his wonderful, utterly irreplaceable car.

Aziraphale shot him a sympathetic look as he got up to answer the phone, leaving Crowley sitting alone on the sofa, clutching his pint of ice cream and looking absolutely wrecked.

While Aziraphale strode out of the bookshop’s back room, Crowley looked down moodily into the depths of the ice cream carton, feeling simultaneously numb and like someone had ripped his insides out. He prodded halfheartedly at the ice cream with the spoon, trying not to remember the moment he had first laid eyes on the Bentley.

He couldn’t imagine ever owning another vehicle. Even the thought of looking for a replacement turned his stomach. But, worst of all, he felt that he had failed her, had screwed up so badly and mistreated the Bentley to such a degree that she couldn’t even bear to be around him anymore, that she would rather take a life of oblivion at the hands of a stranger than remain conscious under Crowley’s care. She must have been so unhappy; he must have been so blind.

“Hello?” Crowley heard Aziraphale ask from the other room, the ringing of the phone finally cutting off.

Crowley waited miserably for Aziraphale to hang up and come back, muttering something about telemarketers.

Instead, Aziraphale was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “Crowley, come here.”

Crowley didn’t much want to go anywhere, wanted to just sit here and cry until he started to feel less awful, but the seriousness in Aziraphale’s voice was enough to drag him to his feet.

It took him a moment to stumble into the bookshop’s main room, still clutching the pint of ice cream and feeling a little ill. “Wha’sss?”

Aziraphale looked him dead in the eye and held the corded receiver out to him. “It’s for you.”

Crowley scrunched up his face at Aziraphale in confusion, feeling as though his mind were slogging through treacle. Then he drunkenly grabbed the receiver, holding it up to his ear and clutching the pint of ice cream closer to his chest with the other. He sniffled loudly, feeling miserable. “Wha?”

_“I SEE A LITTLE SILHOUETTE OF A MAN. SCARAMOUCHE, SCARAMOUCHE, WILL YOU DO THE FANDAGO?”_ the phone bellowed at him.

Crowley automatically yanked the receiver away from his ear, the music still perfectly audible from several inches away.

It took Crowley a single long, uncomprehending moment to recognise the song, and then he felt his heart skip a beat in disbelief. Simultaneously, something in the cold knot in his chest began to unwind just a little, like a delicate frond uncurling from its fiddlehead.

“That—” Crowley started haltingly, his voice breaking. “Old girl, is that you?” He could hear the tenuous hope in his voice, bogged down by worry and disbelief.

_ “WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEND.”_

Crowley drew a ragged breath, almost shaking with relief. Aziraphale reached out for the pint of ice cream and Crowley handed it to him gratefully, clinging instead to the receiver with both hands and turning away from Aziraphale slightly, feeling as though this conversation should be had privately.

“I—I’m really—” he began, but broke off as the music issuing from the receiver hastily switched right in the middle of the chorus.

_“It’s easy being with you, sacred simplicity,” _the Bentley sang in the voice of Jess Glynne. Then the music switched again:_ “Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad_.”

Crowley blinked in incomprehension for a few moments, and then he felt his heart drop into his stomach. “Rather Be,” “Call Me Maybe”—the Bentley was playing the songs Crowley had been trying to listen to when he’d realised she’d corrupted his iTunes library. Before he’d yelled at her.

“No, no, no,” Crowley stammered, feeling tears spring to his eyes. “I—I’m sorry I said those things; I really didn’t mean them.” Crowley swallowed heavily and turned further away from Aziraphale, the coiled phone cord wrapping around him as he clutched the receiver more tightly. “…please come back.”

_ “When I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be,”_ the Bentley played. Then the music cut off, and it was a moment before another fragment of a song issued from the receiver in Crowley’s hand, this time courtesy of Queen: “_We will not let you go—let me go!”_ Then another:_ “I just gotta get out of this prison cell!”_

It took Crowley a second to parse the lyrics, staring into the middle distance and clinging to the receiver. _Just gotta get out of this prison cell._

“You—you’re stuck somewhere?” he guessed, his voice strengthening slightly as he latched onto the promise of something actionable, something he could actually do to help.

The Bentley honked twice, the familiar _“toot, toot”_ deeply reassuring even as it emanated from Aziraphale’s ancient landline.

“Where?”

There was a slight pause, and then more fragments of music, strung together in an unwieldly chain. _“And I rode a million miles…never kept the same address…Now I got mortgages and homes…” _Even as the Bentley tried to string together more snatches of lyrics, the volume began to fade, the audio cutting out every few seconds. Crowley’s first thought was that Aziraphale’s fossil of a phone was finally going up to join the spirit in the sky, and it took him a few moments to work out that the fault lay with the connection itself, and that the Bentley was the one supporting the connection.

Crowley poured magic into her every time he drove her, the same way he poured magic into his terrified plants, bringing them to life by the sheer magnitude and frequency of his attention, and it didn’t take a genius to realise that that supply was limited. He knew she hadn’t made it through the war. He didn’t want to know exactly how long she would last without him, but he had a sinking feeling that placing a call of her own volition was costing her a great deal.

_“Love of my life, don’t leave me,”_ the Bentley tried as the audio wound down further, the static on the line increasing as the connection failed.

“Just—hang on,” Crowley said all in a rush, clutching the receiver more tightly. “I’m coming, I swear. I’ll find you.”

Crowley thought his message had gotten through, but he’d barely finished speaking before the phone emitted a short beep and the call failed completely.

Crowley hesitated for a moment, still clutching the receiver, and then he lowered the phone, staring at it in a mixture of relief and horror. When he looked up, he saw that Aziraphale was standing next to him, looking at him expectantly.

“She…she’s trapped somewhere,” Crowley relayed, his throat feeling very dry. He moved his eyes to Aziraphale’s. “We need to go after her.”

Aziraphale gave him a faint smile and gestured towards the door to the shop and the moonlit stretch of Soho beyond it. “After you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow don't have any footnotes in this chapter, lol


	6. Chequing Out

The TrustUs Used Car Centre was just as dark and quiet as it had been five hours previously, when Crowley had investigated the darkened stretches of asphalt with the cab close behind. The locked gate proved no greater barrier than it had last time, Aziraphale waving away the suspicious-looking cabbie that had taken them there as Crowley marched inside.

First, he brought Aziraphale to where he’d found the bullet hole transfers, the two of them taking a few minutes to search the area for any other clues. The impression of Crowley’s magic was still hanging in the air, but so faint now that Crowley himself could barely feel it, and perhaps even that was wishful thinking. He and Aziraphale miracled up two torches and set about searching the surrounding asphalt closely, in case there was anything Crowley had missed, but their survey uncovered nothing new.

At last, they gave up and headed towards the dealership’s main office, the tall windows revealing a dark and still interior.

Crowley convinced the locked door to open with a thought, turned on the lights with a wave of his hand, and immediately began to scour the maze of desks, tables, and water coolers for anything that looked like it contained documents.

Crowley’s invention of paperwork in the eighteenth century had come back to bite him over and over again,[1] but he was damned if he wasn’t going to use it to his advantage now.

⁂

The Bentley started awake as she heard the door to the house slamming shut. She’d been dozing fitfully for the past several hours, utterly exhausted by the strain of placing the phone call to Aziraphale’s bookshop. She was running low on power and had hoped to be left alone the next day, long enough for her wonderful Crowley to track her down and rescue her from the deplorable Wentworth’s clutches.

Unfortunately, it looked like Wentworth had other ideas.

“Ready to get those steering and electrical faults fixed?” he asked as he strode towards her, adjusting his Burberry coat where it was slung neatly over one arm. “You’re in luck, because I know just the man for the job, and I’ve been itching to see the Seine.”

_The Seine?_ the Bentley repeated to herself in confusion. _France?_

“But the border has cameras,” Wentworth continued conversationally as he strode over to a toolbox rolled up against the back wall of the garage, “and we don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

When he turned around, he was holding a screwdriver, but it wasn’t until he’d crouched down in front of her bonnet and started removing her number plate that she realised what he was doing.

She honked very loudly, causing Wentworth to flinch but not deterring him from his task. “Come on, you make it seem like you don’t even like me,” Wentworth teased.

The Bentley tried to honk again, in angry agreement, but the first one had exhausted her enough, and this one came out quieter and almost timidly.

Deciding her best bet was conserving her strength, she fell silent, internally seething as Wentworth removed her front plate and replaced it with one from another set he procured from a drawer in the back of the garage. The Bentley wondered darkly how many other sets he kept back there, and how many other innocent cars he had abducted and laundered across the border.

As Wentworth set about unscrewing her back number plate, the Bentley focused all her energy on creating a very small tear in her oil pan, right at the base. Within seconds, she felt beads of oil begin to drip onto the cement floor.

When Wentworth was satisfied with his work, he tossed the screwdriver and the Bentley’s original plates on top of the workbench. Then he reconnected the negative terminal of her battery, screwed the lid of the box back on, and climbed into the driver’s seat. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction and jammed the key into her ignition. He retarded the spark dutifully, gave the fuel rod a solid pump, pressed in the magneto switches, and pushed the ignition button.

The Bentley’s engine stuttered, struck, and fell silent. Wentworth frowned.

He went through the cycle again—spark, fuel pump, magneto, ignition—but again the Bentley merely adjusted the spark when he wasn’t looking, succeeding in thwarting his attempts to start her.

Wentworth sat back in the seat and scowled at the Bentley’s dash. “Well, then.”

He got out, and the Bentley wondered hopefully if that meant she’d be left alone, but then Wentworth came to a stop in front of her bonnet and reached down for the hand crank.

The crank-start system was a holdover from the days of less reliable cars, intended as a way to manually crank over the engine when the usual methods failed. Of course, in this case the usual methods were failing very much on purpose.

Wentworth gave the crank several forceful, practiced downward strokes, the Bentley’s camshaft beginning to rotate against her will as her engine turned over.

A few seconds later, the Bentley’s engine coughed reluctantly to life, catching the crank and sending it spinning around in a rapid circle. The Bentley did her best to smack Wentworth’s hand with it, but he clearly knew what he was doing, and pulled away in time.

The overrun mechanism kicked in a moment later, disengaging the hand crank as the Bentley’s engine fell gradually into its regular rhythm.

Wentworth grinned smugly and climbed back into the driver’s seat. With these last moments, the Bentley turned all of her attention to the increasingly large puddle of oil beneath her. Her refusal to start had bought her some much-needed time, and the puddle was now nearly a foot across, the oil spread thinly across the concrete floor.

While Wentworth opened the garage door with the same device he’d used the day before, the Bentley focussed on shaping the puddle, using as much magic as she felt she could spare.

Then Wentworth put her in reverse and disengaged the handbrake, and the Bentley hastily put her finishing touches on the puddle.

It wasn’t long before they were speeding towards the nearest motorway, the Bentley doing her best to downshift and drive more slowly as they sped east, towards the Chunnel.

⁂

“You’re _sure_ they don’t open until eight?” Crowley pressed, pacing nervously back and forth across the linoleum floor of the dealership and fiddling with the pair of sunglasses in his hands. Their night of searching had turned up nothing useful, despite their discovery of a stack of title transfer papers dated to the previous day.

“That’s what the sign says,” Aziraphale replied levelly, watching Crowley from one of the padded office chairs. “Come sit down.”

Crowley mumbled something and continued pacing, fingers dancing aimlessly over the plastic frame of his sunglasses, itching to leap into action.

“Come over here,” Aziraphale repeated, voice encouraging. “I have something to tell you.”

Crowley paused, sighed, cast the closed front doors one last look, and trudged over to Aziraphale. “What?”

Aziraphale stood up and leaned over to give Crowley a kiss on the cheek. “I love you, my dear. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Crowley mumbled something in response, followed by, “…love you too.”

“We’ll find the Bentley,” Aziraphale reassured him, taking Crowley’s hand and pressing something into his palm, “and she’ll be happy to see you. She always is.”

Crowley looked down and saw the bullet hole transfers in his hand.

“Trust me,” Aziraphale said calmly. “She cares for you.”

Crowley moved his gaze to meet Aziraphale’s. “You really think so?”

Aziraphale gave him a kind smile. “My dear, I don’t know how anyone couldn’t.”

At that moment, there came the sound of a door opening from somewhere behind Crowley, followed by a short, surprised silence and then: “Pardon, but who the hell are you?”

Crowley smiled faintly in relief and turned on his heel to face the slightly overweight man in a reasonably well-fitting suit standing with one hand on the open door, a set of keys dangling from the other. Crowley nimbly tucked the bullet hole transfers into his jacket pocket.

“You must be Mr Monroe,” Crowley said, striding forward.

“I—yes—er—how do you know me?” Monroe asked, looking baffled and more than a little suspicious.

“You have lots of paperwork, Mr Monroe,” Crowley said as he neared, flicking his sunglasses open with a practiced movement of his wrist and sliding them deftly onto his nose, “but nothing about selling the 1926 6½ Litre Bentley that was here yesterday afternoon.”

Monroe’s face went white, his gaze shifting from Crowley to where Aziraphale was standing behind him and then back to Crowley. “I—” he began, voice stammering, and then he turned and bolted.

Crowley was after him in a flash, grabbing onto his arm roughly and dragging him to a standstill only a metre or so outside the building. “No, no—come back here—”

Monroe tried to pull away, dragging Crowley after him in his efforts to escape. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t even work here! Help! Somebody help!”

“Shut up,” Crowley hissed in irritation, beginning to lose his grip on Monroe’s arm. “I’m not going to hurt you, you idiot.”

“Help! I’m being assaulted!” Monroe shouted, flailing about with his free arm to try to get the attention of one of the passing motorists, or perhaps the customers at the nearby Nando’s.

And then, all at once, everything went black.

Crowley blinked in alarm and disorientation, and it took him a couple of rapid heartbeats to realise that they’d been transported to a darkened space, and another to recognize the interior of the dealership they had just left.

He caught the familiar taste of Aziraphale’s magic, and when Crowley pulled his sunglasses off he saw that window blinds had sprung into existence on each of the dealership’s exterior windows. Each one was pulled fully closed, letting in only the faintest trickle of light.

In his surprise, Crowley had loosened his grip on Monroe, who now wrenched his arm free and immediately collided with one of the desks. Behind it stood Aziraphale, cast into shadow and outlined only by the faint light filtering through the window blinds behind him. His silhouette looked quite intimidating, even to Crowley; quite an impressive feat, really, considering Crowley usually found it to be the very opposite.[2]

Monroe squeaked in terror and tried to back up, running into the desk chair and almost falling over. His head snapped back and forth, trying to understand where he was and how he’d gotten there.

“Sit down, Mr Monroe,” Aziraphale said, moving a hand forward slightly to indicate the desk chair Monroe had just collided with. Aziraphale’s voice wasn’t especially intimidating in Crowley’s opinion, but there was something about being spoken to by a backlit silhouette with an expensive-sounding accent that made terrified used car salesmen prone to obedience.

Monroe only hesitated for a moment before sinking into the desk chair, visibly sweating. “Please, I—I have a family.”

“We’re—I told you, we’re not going to hurt you,” Crowley said in exasperation, tucking his sunglasses away and folding his arms.

Monroe cast Crowley a fearful glance out of the corner of his eye. “What—what do you want?”

“Information,” Aziraphale said calmly.

Monroe looked, if anything, even more terrified at this, as though Aziraphale had just suggested Crowley fetch the fingernail-puller. Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Any—anything!” Monroe stammered. “That—that car! The old Bentley! I can tell you who has it.”

Crowley’s attention was immediately arrested, and he took a quick step closer, unfolding his arms. “Do tell.”

“It’s—it was—oh.” Monroe squeezed his eyes shut. “He told me not to write his name down. It was—_oh_—he was rich. I could tell. Shite hair, expensive suit. Surname was…oh…” Monroe clenched his fingers together. “Westinghouse? Penthouse? Worthington? Something posh like that.”

Crowley frowned. “Which way did they go? Did he say anything about where he was taking her?”

“H—her?” Monroe asked, his eyes flicking open in surprise. He looked at Crowley in confusion for a moment, and then all the blood drained from his face. “Jesus Christ, I knew it was odd he wanted that car, and to keep it all hush-hush—but there wasn’t—I didn’t—there wasn’t some poor girl in the boot, was there?”

Crowley could only blink at him for a few moments, feeling as though Monroe had done the conversational equivalent of slapping him with a fish in the middle of the Mojave. “…what?”

“Oh, I—I didn’t know, I swear,” Monroe said, wiping his sweaty palms on his trouser legs. “I knew I shouldn’t have sold that car, that it wasn’t mine to sell, but he was very insistent and I really needed the money, and it sounded like he was going to sue me or have the business investigated or something if I didn’t do what he said, and I—I swear, agents, I’m an honest man—”

“Concentrate,” Aziraphale snapped, and Monroe immediately fell silent, though he audibly swallowed. “Where’s the car now?”

“I—I don’t—” Monroe began. “He didn’t leave an address, like I said, didn’t even want me to write down his name. All he did was give me—” He broke off, his expression cycling through several emotions before finally settling on excitement. “He gave me a cheque! I didn’t look at it very closely, but it would have his name and address on it, surely!”

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale in surprise, wondering if it really could be that easy.

“It’d—it’d be in there,” Monroe said eagerly, pointing towards the corner of the building, where several enclosed offices lined the wall. “I didn’t put it with the other cheques because…well, he wanted it all done off the books, you see.”

Crowley caught Aziraphale’s eye and nodded.

“Find it,” Aziraphale instructed, and Crowley stood aside to let the clearly still-terrified Monroe inch past him. He glanced over at Crowley as he went past, and he jumped a little when he saw Crowley’s serpentine eyes.

Crowley followed Monroe into the office, watching with a mixture of impatience and worry as Monroe sifted through the pile of documents that Crowley had upended on his desk during his search for clues.

It took several long minutes, but Monroe finally produced a manila cheque from the pile of paperwork.

“Here!” he cried in clear relief, holding the cheque out in front of him. “140 Upper Burrow Road, Albury Heath, Guildford.” He handed it to Crowley, who immediately committed the address to memory, along with the name of the thrice-blessed thief: Radcliffe A. Wentworth. Then Crowley’s gaze drifted down to the amount, and he felt himself stiffen in outrage.

“A hundred and fifty thousand pounds?” he demanded.

Monroe looked stricken. “I’m sorry, he wouldn’t take no for an answer; I had to take it, really—”

Crowley glared at Monroe. “You sold my girl for only _a hundred and fifty thousand pounds?”_

Monroe visibly quaked.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Anything else we should know?”

Monroe turned his attention reluctantly to Aziraphale, his expression crumpling into one of anxiety, as though he thought failure to produce some piece of salient information would certainly lead to an indictment later. “I…uh…I don’t think so…”

“Good,” Aziraphale said brusquely. He looked expectantly at Crowley.

Crowley took a deep breath and tucked the cheque away in one of his jacket pockets, a different one from where he’d stowed the precious bullet hole transfers. He moved to join Aziraphale, shooting a sharp glance at Monroe as he went. “She’s worth at least three hundred, you know.”

Aziraphale held the door open for him, and Crowley strode out into the still-darkened main room of the dealership, Aziraphale close behind. With a snap of Aziraphale’s fingers, the window blinds all flipped open, flooding the building with light.

Behind them, Monroe crept to the edge of the office door, clearly keen to make sure they left but too terrified to follow more closely.

Crowley reached the door leading to the car park and paused, glancing out a nearby window.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Crowley said to Monroe without looking around. “To get to this address, we’re going to need a car.”

“Anything!” Monroe agreed hastily. “Anything you agents need.”

“Something fast,” Crowley said, parting two of the metal window blinds with a finger. His gaze trailed over the rows of cars and came to a stop on one of the vehicles clustered around the base of the dealership’s sign. “Something like _that_.”

⁂

“Here, turn here!” Aziraphale cried, though rather unnecessarily, given that the satnav built into the dash of the cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Crowley had commandeered from the dealership had already told him as much thirty seconds ago.

“I got it, angel,” Crowley assured him, turning down a narrow road bordered on both sides by dense forest. He pressed down on the accelerator and the Tesla leapt ahead, sending a burst of wind streaming over the windscreen of the convertible and through Crowley’s hair.[3]

“It should be just up here somewhere,” Aziraphale guessed.

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed, squinting through the trees.

The road turned quite sharply to the left, and Crowley let the Tesla slow as a set of broad metal gates came into view ahead of them. Beyond them, he could see an Edwardian-style manor house with a rather ghastly four-car attached garage. A silver Porsche sat on the gravel drive outside.

“This looks promising,” Aziraphale commented.

“Ngk,” Crowley said, overriding the gates’ state-of-the-art security system and opening them with the same wave of his hand.

They were soon rolling up the drive, Crowley raking his eyes across the lawn and various outbuildings. When no one appeared to challenge them, he brought the Tesla to a stop just outside the garage.

“I’m going to check inside,” he announced, putting the car in park[4] and getting out.

“Shall I…?” Aziraphale began.

“Give me a mo,” Crowley said, waving a hand at Aziraphale as he strode towards the garage.

Crowley’s heart was in his throat as he reached the nearest of the overhead doors and instructed it to rise with a thought. It began to obligingly trundle upwards, the midmorning sunlight streaming inside as it did so. As soon as the bottom of the door was at chest-height, Crowley ducked underneath it and stepped into the garage.

It was just as spacious as its exterior dimensions had suggested, though the back wall was cluttered with toolboxes, workbenches, and several high-quality power tools. But the purpose of the garage was clearly to house the cars, three of which stood in a line before him.

Crowley felt his hopes plummet when he saw that the Bentley wasn’t among them, but he forced himself to stride past them anyway, heading dutifully for the one empty stall. He slowed to a stop next to it, looking down at the cement floor and the small puddle of oil resting in its centre.

He crouched down, closing his eyes and feeling for a faint impression of his own power. He found it after only a heartbeat, a remnant of discharged magic still hanging in the air.

She’d been here; of that he was certain. But she was gone now. He was too late.

Crowley squeezed his eyes further shut, and then he exhaled quickly and forced himself to his feet, blinking rapidly.

In an effort to fight back the rising wave of worry and discouragement, Crowley turned and started prodding through the scattered papers and pieces of hardware strewn over the nearest workbench, telling himself rather feebly that he was looking for clues.

The good news was that, unless this unsavoury Wentworth had taken the Bentley to be sold—unlikely, given that he’d just bought her—he’d be back sooner or later. Surely he’d just taken her out for a spin,[5] and would return in a few hours. All Crowley had to do was wait.

Crowley was so preoccupied with these thoughts, trying to reassure himself that everything was all right and he hadn’t failed the Bentley after all, that it was quite remarkable that he actually registered the pair of number plates resting on the corner of the workbench.

It took Crowley another distracted moment to recognize the top one, and then he let out a strangled breath and snatched it up, hastily flipping it around in his hands so he could better read the number: SP30 DMN.[6]

Crowley ran his hand over the plate in a mix of horror and disbelief, and then he clutched it to his chest. Everything he’d just been assuring himself about Wentworth returning posthaste with the Bentley immediately flew from his mind.

If Wentworth had bothered to change the Bentley’s plates just hours after buying her, then he must be intending on taking her off the grid—sold abroad, perhaps, or laundered, or sold for parts, or something else equally nefarious.[7]

Crowley hastily grabbed the second number plate and then stood there in crisis for a series of frightened breaths, knowing now that the Bentley was in deep trouble but not seeing a path forward.

He had been very lucky in Germany. After they’d been separated, the Bentley had only changed hands twice, and remained in Berlin. She had been a distinctive vehicle even then, especially since she was of foreign make, and as such had been relatively easy to track.

But now…

The trail ended here. If Wentworth had indeed gone to sell her, even when he returned there was no guarantee he would be able to provide any useful information about the buyer; these things were often handled at least semi-anonymously so as to provide plausible deniability under the law. By the time Crowley would be able to identify her next buyer, she could be a continent away.

She would surface _eventually_, he was certain—there were only so many 1926 Bentleys still around—but who knew what condition she would be in when he found her.

And, though he could always bring her back with his magic, he didn’t want her to have to fade away at all, believing in her last moments that Crowley had given up on her.

As Crowley stood there paralyzed with indecision, his gaze resting unseeingly on the empty stretch of concrete where the Bentley had been just hours earlier, his mind zeroed in on the terrible fact that this was where his wonderful car had placed her desperate call, beseeching Crowley to help her. This empty parking spot might be the last trace of her he had for a long time, just this stretch of dirty concrete and an oddly shaped puddle of oil.

Quite oddly shaped, actually.

Though, now that he was looking at it, the vaguely square-shaped puddle was actually rather familiar-shaped, in a way that Crowley couldn’t quite put his finger on. His interest captured, Crowley walked over and frowned down at it, wondering what would have made oil form such an uneven shape.

Then, all in the span of a heartbeat, Crowley recognised the shape; put together that the oil must be from the _Bentley_, who had been parked here so recently; and realised that the Bentley must have _left_ this here purposefully, as a message for him. The old girl was trying to talk to him still.

Crowley jerked away from the puddle and sprinted for the open garage door, still clutching the number plates to his chest.

Aziraphale was waiting for him just outside the Tesla, looking around the property nervously and fiddling with his hands.

“France!” Crowley shouted as he ran across the gravel towards Aziraphale. “He took her to France, she left me a sign—and he took off her plates too, the right bastard!”

“France?” Aziraphale echoed in confusion as he watched Crowley sprint closer. “Whatever for?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Crowley huffed as he reached the Tesla and tossed the plates inside, his feet spraying up gravel as he skidded to a stop. “But I’m sure it’s not good. Get in, angel. If we’re quick, we might still be able to catch them before they reach the Chunnel.”

__________

1. Not least of all in Germany, and also in Hell, where his invention had brought him a commendation and then a stack of papers every time he wanted to request a new corporation.

2. Given that it was soft and angel-shaped and all.

3. Contrary to popular opinion, Crowley _did_ know how to drive—or, more accurately, he knew how to _steer._ The Bentley had always taken care of all that pesky gear and spark business, and fortunately the Tesla—being a fully electric vehicle—had need of neither.

4. Crowley had been very careful to drive the car using purely mechanical means, utterly unwilling to pour an ounce of his power into any vehicle other than the Bentley.

5. Still a horrible prospect, as far as Crowley was concerned; the thought of some pretentious bastard driving the Bentley around against her will rubbed him the wrong way.

6. Perhaps it was a bit on the nose, but it had turned out to be terribly apt.

7. For a being whose sole job was being nefarious and sowing the seeds of nefarious deeds in others, Crowley deeply disliked it whenever anyone else had nefarious ideas, especially when they personally inconvenienced him.


	7. Fast & Furious

“Blasted car,” Wentworth muttered in irritation as he shifted the Bentley up to fourth gear. The Bentley only complied for a few seconds before quietly shifting back into third. Though it put a good deal more strain on her engine, it succeeded in slowing her pace, as well as eating up more of the unwanted petrol.

“Have to do a full overhaul of the transmission,” Wentworth continued under his breath. “Gut it all, get something better. New engine, perhaps.”

The Bentley was so legitimately horrified by this prospect[1] that she drifted them onto the rumble strips out of sheer pettiness.

They’d been driving for over an hour now, speeding down the M25 and then the M20 and drawing ever closer to the Chunnel and the uncertain future that lay beyond it. She’d been trying to slow their progress as much as possible, hopeful that Crowley would arrive to rescue her at any minute, but the sustained effort was exhausting, and she was beginning to worry that this might be a marathon, not a sprint. At the rate she was eating up her reserves, she’d be lucky if she lasted past tomorrow. She could only hope that Crowley had been able to track her to Wentworth’s garage, and found her message there.

It had been a dangerous gamble—she was still leaking oil, and she could feel what little she had left beginning to run very thin, her engine firing with more friction than was safe—but she had been unable to think of any other way to leave a message, and had been desperate to leave some sort of clue behind.

In the driver’s seat, Wentworth reached over to adjust her radio, evidently tiring of listening to the loop of “Radio ga ga. Radio goo goo. Radio ga ga” that the Bentley had put on repeat.

“Ruddy radio’s broken too; bloody awful car,” Wentworth muttered, and that was when an incredibly loud _blaaaaaagghh!!_ burst through the air.

Wentworth was so startled that he jerked the Bentley instinctively towards the shoulder of the road, swerving them over the rumble strips. He hastily adjusted and glanced in the wing mirror.

And there, in the other lane and only a few hundred metres behind them, trapped behind a sporty blue hatchback and a slow-looking Peugeot, was a low-slung bright red convertible being driven by a demon. Said demon was half-standing up in the driver’s seat, one hand on the top of the windscreen and the other on the steering wheel as he shouted something, the sound falling short of the Bentley and her captor.[2]

_“Toot, toot!”_ the Bentley honked in joyous greeting, overcome with relief at the sight of Crowley.

“Shit,” Wentworth swore, and pushed up the throttle lever.

The Bentley immediately fought back, downshifting in defiance so quickly that she felt her engine grate quite alarmingly.

_“No,”_ Wentworth said in annoyance, and shifted her back up. This time, he kept his hand on her gear stick, keeping her locked in fourth gear.

“OH MAMMA MIA, MAMMA MIA!” the Bentley blasted. “MAMMA MIA, LET ME GO!”

⁂

Crowley dropped back down into the seat of the Tesla and laid on the horn again, trying fruitlessly to convince the clearly elderly and half-deaf woman in the white Peugeot in front of him to get a move on already.

“How are we going to…?” Aziraphale began uncertainly, clutching the door of the Tesla as Crowley advanced rapidly on the Peugeot’s bumper.

“Any bloody way that we can,” Crowley replied shortly, and yanked the wheel of the Tesla hard to the left, pulling them off the road and onto the narrow shoulder.

The car vibrated mightily as they sped past the Peugeot, almost veering off the road entirely.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale shouted in warning.

“Get out of the way!” Crowley shouted at the Peugeot, which finally let up long enough for Crowley to cut back into the lane with another vicious twist of the wheel.

_“Care_ful!” Aziraphale scolded, sounding stressed.

In front of them, the Bentley had whizzed ahead, though she was weaving alarmingly in the lane, her shocks clearly struggling under the stress.

Crowley hit the accelerator.

The Tesla roared and advanced rapidly, the distance between them and the Bentley closing swiftly.

Crowley was just moving to overtake her, changing lanes to better convince Wentworth to get the hell off the road, when Wentworth evidently decided to do just that. With no warning, Wentworth hit the brakes hard, causing the Tesla to overshoot them as the Bentley fell back and veered abruptly to the left, darting across the other lane and speeding down an opportunely placed off-slip.

“Goodne—he’s exiting, exiting!” Aziraphale shouted, but Crowley had already slammed on the Tesla’s brakes and yanked the wheel hard to port, sending them into an uncontrolled skid across the no-man’s-land of asphalt between the main road and the slip road. Crowley was thrown against the car’s door with the force of the skid, white-knuckling the steering wheel as he kept his foot on the brake pedal, struggling to keep the car under control. The Tesla’s tyres screamed at the abuse as they skidded first across asphalt and then grass, only narrowly avoiding slamming into the crash barrier.

Then they passed the critical point of the turn, Crowley feeling the tyres finally gain some traction as they lost speed. A heartbeat later they skidded onto asphalt again, and Crowley slammed on the accelerator.

“Good Lord,” Aziraphale said faintly, clutching the Tesla’s door more tightly as they fishtailed for a second and then straightened out.

“He’s not getting away that easily,” Crowley growled, though his heart was hammering in his chest and he felt a little light-headed himself.

They sped down the off-slip just as, at its base, the Bentley skidded through an amber light and hung a sharp right, her tyres squealing.

“It’s red, it’s red, it’s red!” Aziraphale shouted as the Tesla barrelled at full speed towards the junction.

Crowley ploughed into the junction at full speed, carefully relocating an inconveniently located Vauxhall with a thought and jerking the wheel to the right at the last possible second, slamming on the brakes simultaneously to send them into a tight sideways skid. This time he caught the smell of burning rubber, acrid and sharp.

Aziraphale shouted something, but Crowley couldn’t hear him over the screeching of the tyres, and then the car was back under control and they were out of the junction, shooting under the motorway. Only a few heartbeats later, they were blazing down a winding forest road, trees flashing by on either side. The Bentley wasn’t far ahead of them, again zigzagging alarmingly.

Crowley half-rose out of his seat, struggling to keep his foot on the accelerator and a hand on the wheel while trying to get a good fix on the Bentley, wondering what he could do to slow her down safely.

“Crowley, please! Good heavens, sit down before you get us both killed!”

Little as though Crowley wanted to admit it, Aziraphale did have a point. This road was too winding for Crowley to easily follow it at such dangerous speeds, but it was also clear that Wentworth wasn’t going to stop unless something stopped him, and Crowley rathered it was a stalled engine than a tree.

Crowley ground his teeth together and plopped back down into the seat. He flipped on cruise control and stood up again.

“Scoot over, angel.”

They took a curve very tightly, Crowley staggering a little as the Tesla’s tyres screeched in protest, the Bentley still over a hundred metres ahead, a dark shape visible through the trees.

“Have you lost your mind?” Aziraphale shouted, sounding horrified.

“Get over here before I hit something,” Crowley shouted back, the wind whipping through his hair as he stepped over the small centre console, moving towards Aziraphale’s seat, only one hand on the wheel.

“Crowley—good Lo—oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Aziraphale lunged for the wheel as Crowley abandoned it, barely keeping them on the road as they veered into the oncoming lane.

Now in the passenger seat, Crowley resumed his half-standing position, clinging to the top edge of the windscreen and squinting against the wind, trying to spot the Bentley through the trees.

“We need to be closer!” Crowley shouted.

“Then why don’t you _bloody well drive!”_ Aziraphale shouted crossly.

“Take it off cruise,” Crowley directed.

“Take it off—I don’t _bloody well know what that means!”_

“It’s—igh—” Crowley reached over and hit the button himself, nearly falling into Aziraphale’s lap in the process as they careened around a corner far too sharply. “Do try to stay on the road.”

Aziraphale made a wordless noise of frustration.

Crowley turned his attention back to the road, but now that they were off cruise they were slowing, the Bentley all but vanished from view ahead.

“We’re losing them! Accelerate, angel!”

“I—I don’t—” Crowley could hear Aziraphale hitting the pedals willy-nilly, the car continuing to slow.

“It doesn’t have a clutch, just hit the right pedal!” Crowley shouted.

“I don’t know which one the right one—oh!” Aziraphale succeeded in finding the accelerator, and the Tesla leapt ahead, pushing Crowley back down into his seat with the force of the acceleration. Crowley heard the engine rev up to 10,000 RPMs as Aziraphale floored it, whipping them around the next curve so quickly that they skidded all the way to the far edge of the opposite lane.

Unfortunately, it was at that exact moment that a silver Volkswagen appeared around the curve, heading straight towards them.

“Brake!” Crowley shouted, clinging to the car door as he watched a flashforward of their impending discorporations.

Then, faster than ought to have been possible for a vehicle with such a strong trajectory, the Tesla abruptly sped back into its own lane, the Volkswagen simultaneously hitting full reverse as though being played backwards on a reel of old film.

And then it was all over, and they were back in their lane speeding full steam ahead.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said calmly. “I see why you do that. It’s really not so bad, is it?”

Crowley gasped and opened his mouth to suggest that maybe Aziraphale take it just a little bit slower, but that was when he saw the Bentley ahead of them again, faint tendrils of smoke trailing after her.

“Oi!” Crowley shouted, leaning out of the side of the Tesla to get a better view as the road straightened out for a span, the trees receding slightly from the roadside. “Stop hurting my car!”

They were accelerating rapidly on the Bentley, which began to weave again as they approached, as though she sensed the proximity of her would-be rescuers.

Crowley reached out with his mind, finding the Bentley’s camshaft and reducing its rotations, dragging it almost to a halt. To his delight, the Bentley slowed immensely, though this was immediately accompanied by a fresh burst of black smoke spilling from under her bonnet.

Crowley swore and hastily let up, dodging his head back behind the Tesla’s windscreen as they sped into the haze of black smoke hanging over the road.

Crowley coughed, the acrid smoke biting at his lungs, and then he turned his attention back to the road, this time reaching out towards the surface of the road in front of the Bentley and willing it to soften.

The Bentley lurched as she surged into the huge span of mud Crowley had just miracled into existence, tyres spinning as she struggled through the mire. The Bentley’s momentum was enough to see her through, though, and Crowley had to hastily miracle the road back to normal before the Tesla hit the same stretch.

“Knock out the tyres,” Aziraphale suggested.

“I—I don’t want—” Crowley protested fearfully, appalled at the idea.

“You can miracle it better!” Aziraphale exclaimed.

Crowley scrunched his face up, but he couldn’t think of anything better, and the longer this chase went on the more likely it was that one of them was going to end up wrapped around a tree.

As though in response to his thought, the trees closed back in around them as the road took a sharp right turn, zigzagging back into the forest. Crowley swallowed heavily and leaned out the side of the Tesla again, looking towards the Bentley only fifty metres ahead now, smoke still issuing from her bonnet.

“I’m sorry, old girl,” Crowley said quietly, and then he made eye contact with the Bentley’s back right tyre and blew it out.

The Bentley immediately careened into the oncoming lane, tyres screeching as she lurched unsteadily, her wheel rim dipping low and her exhaust pipe threatening to skip along the asphalt.

Crowley winced, but his attack had had the intended effect, and the Bentley was soon skidding to a halt near the edge of the road, her back end hanging lopsidedly and smoke still issuing from beneath her bonnet. Aziraphale slammed on the brakes and a moment later they skidded to a halt not far from the Bentley, the speed of the deceleration sending Crowley’s shoulder forward into the edge of the windscreen.

He barely noticed, though, because as soon as they reached walking speeds Crowley threw open the door of the Tesla. He staggered as he stepped out onto the asphalt, the abrupt change in velocity leaving him vertiginous. He didn’t give himself time to recover, instead sprinting unsteadily towards the Bentley, where the driver’s door was being pushed open by a man who could be none other than the nefarious Radcliffe Wentworth himself.

Wentworth coughed as he stepped out of the Bentley, waving a hand to try to clear the faint screen of dark smoke hanging in the air. He looked a little haggard, his perfectly styled hair blown astray and expression dazed, but his fingers were still wrapped around the edge of the Bentley’s door.

“Get away from my girl, you bastard!” Crowley shouted, and decked him.

Wentworth staggered backwards and hit the ground with satisfying thump, sprawling there with a stunned expression.

_“Toot, toot!”_ the Bentley tried, the sound very faint as her headlights flickered and dimmed.

Crowley took only a singular moment of triumph to flex his hand and relieve his smarting knuckles before turning his entire attention to the Bentley. He pulled her door open all the way and sank into the seat that Wentworth had so recently vacated.

After the trip in the Tesla, sitting in the Bentley felt so wonderfully familiar and _right_, and Crowley felt his heart tighten as he ran his hands down her steering wheel. He could only barely feel the Bentley, her spirit very faint, and he knew she must have fought desperately to try to get back to him.

“I’m so sorry, old girl,” Crowley said softly, and opened himself. He poured his power into her with all the gentleness and genuine affection he always strove to show her, feeling for areas of damage and mending her as gently and swiftly as he could. The tyre was an easy enough fix, as Aziraphale had said it would be, but she’d run her engine ragged, the very low oil levels causing a dangerous amount of friction and exacerbating what looked like a considerable amount of damage caused by incorrect shifting. He spent several long moments making the necessary repairs, his eyes closed and hands resting lightly on her steering wheel. When that was done, he patched up the leak in her oil pan and filled up her oil again, bringing it back to a safe level.

The Bentley’s tape deck clicked on as Crowley set about banishing the oil fumes from the cab, pulling the faint smudges from the upholstery.

“_As long as I am with you, my heart continues to beat,” _Jess Glynne sang.

“Oh,” Crowley said, letting the flow of power trickle off as his fingers twitched uncomfortably on the steering wheel. “Oh, no, there’s no need for that, old girl. Really. I—” Crowley hesitated, and then he lifted his hands from the steering wheel so he could rub them together nervously. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you, and I—I shouldn’t have taken you for granted. I’m…I’m really very sorry. You can play whatever you like; of course you can. I shouldn’t tell you what music you can listen to.”

_“If you gave me a chance, I would take it,”_ Clean Bandit continued from the radio, though the music grew softer as the Bentley turned the volume down.

“Really,” Crowley added after a moment. “Queen’s all right with me. And I like Queen, I really do; it’s just—it’s nice to have a bit of variety now and then, that’s all. But I can do that on my own time, so please don’t worry about it.”

There was a pause, and then Freddie Mercury sang, _“Can’t we give ourselves one more chance? Why can’t we give love that one more chance?”_

Crowley smiled wanly, but it didn’t last long. “I’m just so—so—please don’t run off like that again.” Crowley rubbed the back of one of his hands anxiously. “You could have been seriously hurt, and everything turned out okay this time, but something could have gone wrong and I—I might not have been able to find you again—”

_“You’re my best friend,” _the Bentley interrupted gently. _“In rain or shine, you’ve stood by me, girl. I’m happy at home—happy at home.”_

Crowley’s throat grew a little tight, and he reached out to give the Bentley’s steering wheel a grateful pat. As he did so, his fingertips brushed the tip of an unfamiliar protuberance, and he realised that there was a key in her ignition. A moment later, he recognized it as the spare he always kept in the back of the glove box, buried among the Queen cassettes, in case of emergencies.

“Well, we won’t be needing that, now will we?” Crowley said, and pulled the key out.[3]

_“I’m having such a good time; I’m having a ball!”_ the radio sang. The Bentley revved her engine appreciatively.

“We’ll get you back to normal in no time,” Crowley promised, giving her steering wheel another gentle pat. “Now, what else can I do?”

The Bentley’s radio was silent for a moment. Then came a snippet from “Bicycle Race”: _“You say ‘smile,’ I say ‘cheese’!”_

Crowley frowned at the stereo, unsure what the Bentley was trying to convey to him. Then he turned his gaze to the dash, searching for the familiar photograph of himself and Aziraphale that he’d pasted off to one side, by the magneto switches. It was missing.

_“Ain’t no sound but the sound of his feet,” _the Bentley’s radio played, before switching to “Bohemian Rhapsody”._ “Little low, any way the wind blows.”_

Again, it took Crowley a puzzled moment to piece together what the Bentley meant, and then he looked down, casting his eyes over the seats. He found what he was looking for in the passenger footwell, lying facedown on the floor.

He retrieved the photograph and carefully brushed off its glossy face, where his own image smiled back at him, one arm looped around Aziraphale.

Crowley smiled faintly at it, and then he pressed it back into its place, taking care to make sure that the piece of tape on its reverse was still sufficiently sticky.

_“Crazy little thing called love,”_ the Bentley played.

Crowley couldn’t suppress a huff of laughter. “Oh, shut up.”

Then his expression brightened, and he hastily dug around in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Oh, and I’ve got…here…the stickers…” Crowley held his hand out, poking hopefully at the circular bullet hole transfers. “As long as you still want them, I mean. Though I suppose they’re getting a bit old now…”

_“Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Out of the doorway the bullets rip, to the sound of the beat!”_

Crowley gave her a relieved grin, and then he tucked the windscreen transfers back into his pocket for the time being, unwilling to get out of the car long enough to stick them back on. “Oh! And I have your number plates, too; I found them at the garage. And thank you for the wonderful map! We never would have found you otherwise, at least not straight away; it was very clever of you.”

_“Toot, toot!”_

Crowley gave the Bentley a fond smile, beginning to finally feel like everything might turn out all right after all. His gaze paused on the petrol gauge. “And we’ll burn up that petrol in no time, no need for the stinky stuff, eh?”

_“I’m a racing car, passing by like Lady Godiva!”_

Crowley grinned.

_“I’m gonna go, go, go, there’s no stopping me!”_

⁂

On the other side of the road, Aziraphale dragged the dishevelled Wentworth to his feet.

“You are truly a despicable human being,” Aziraphale informed him in no uncertain terms.

“I—I—I’m telling you, there’s something seriously wrong with that car,” Wentworth stammered. He looked a little wild, his eyes wide and a dark bruise already blossoming along one cheek. “It’s got to be possessed or something! No electrical fault could do all that.”

Aziraphale snorted. “I should think not.”

“I’m serious,” Wentworth said, looking at Aziraphale as though he were desperately searching for affirmation that he hadn’t gone utterly mad. “It’s some sort of devil car, I’m telling you!”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed readily, nodding towards Crowley. “And there’s her devil.”

⁂

“You’re taking care of him?” Crowley asked Aziraphale from the driver’s seat of the Bentley, jerking his head towards where Aziraphale had taken the liberty of handcuffing Wentworth to the Tesla.

“I’m sure the police will be happy to have him,” Aziraphale said mildly. “Else I’ll convince them otherwise.”

Crowley beamed. “Excellent. Shall I pick you up after you’ve dropped off the Tesla?”

“Hmm?”

“The Tesla. Aren’t you taking it back to the cowardly Monroe?”

“Oh, ah, well, I was actually wondering if I could keep her.”

Crowley blinked at him, wondering if he had heard properly. _“You_ want to keep the _Tesla?”_

Aziraphale gave an affirmative little hum. “I know we’ve only just met, but she seems ever so friendly, and it would be rude to take her back so soon. We had a moment earlier, as we dodged our mutual destructions, you see. And I do think that perhaps it’s more fun when you’re the one doing the actual driving. Perhaps I’ve been missing out on something all these years.”

Crowley just stared at him. “You’re not serious.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t be.”

“Angel…” Crowley began, wondering where to even start. Then he decided, _what the hell, the angel might as well have a Tesla_. “You know, that’s totally fine. Have fun.”

Aziraphale blinked at him, and then he grinned broadly. “I will. See you tonight, then, my dear?”

“You bet,” Crowley said, leaning over the top of the Bentley’s door for a good-bye kiss.

_“That’s because I’m a good old-fashioned lover boy,”_ the Bentley played smugly. Crowley didn’t mind one bit.

Two Months Later

Crowley hummed along to “Somebody to Love” as the Bentley sped along the gently winding country road nestled into the rolling hills of the South Downs.

He glanced off to his left, looking past the empty passenger’s seat and towards the candy-floss clouds filling that portion of the sky. It was a little strange, not having Aziraphale there with him, but it was also very refreshing to have some time alone with the Bentley. He feared he may have been neglecting her in recent years, when time with the Bentley had almost definitionally meant time with Aziraphale. It was nice to have it be just the two of them again.

And he certainly wouldn’t be deprived of Aziraphale’s presence for long; the angel was behind him somewhere, probably putting along in the Tesla at ten miles per hour under the speed limit, holding up all the traffic behind him for miles.

Crowley smiled faintly at the thought, one of his thumbs absently sweeping back and forth along the steering wheel. Aziraphale had had the idea for the two of them to take a little trip out of the city for a week or two, both as a bit of a holiday for themselves and to let the cars stretch their metaphorical legs. And they did need stretching, because, as Crowley could have predicted perfectly well, Aziraphale had spent much of the first month with the Tesla utterly at a loss as to what he was supposed to do with a car.

For one thing, he was so used to only leaving the bookshop when Crowley prompted him to, meaning that there was virtually nowhere he wanted to go on any sort of a regular basis where Crowley (and the Bentley) wouldn’t be accompanying him.[4]

For another, Aziraphale had an even worse grasp of how to drive than Crowley did. Driving a fully electric vehicle was really quite simple, but Aziraphale seemed to have no concept of the width or length of the car, and had already collided with several street signs and bushes, not to mention driven over the kerb more times than Crowley cared to count. When Aziraphale had nearly backed the Tesla straight into the Bentley while attempting to parallel park outside the bookshop, Crowley had put his foot down and demanded the angel take driving lessons.[5]

Aziraphale had sufficiently improved in the ensuing weeks that Crowley had agreed to Aziraphale’s proposed road trip, feeling that the angel was no longer liable to crash the car without his close supervision.

It was also just very relaxing, driving along the secluded country roads through the autumn landscape, all of the trees decked out in their finest colours.

Crowley had gone back to humming along to Queen when he glanced absentmindedly in the Bentley’s wing mirror and was surprised to see a red convertible quickly gaining on him.

“No way. No _sodding_ way!” Crowley twisted in his seat, looking over his shoulder as Aziraphale moved to overtake him.

The Tesla slowed to match the Bentley’s pace as she drew alongside, the two cars honking greetings to each other[6] as their owners did much the same.

“Surprised to see you here!” Crowley called, glancing ahead to make sure that the road was clear.

“Because you thought I’d be driving slowly?” Aziraphale called back, giving Crowley a wide and almost devilish grin, the wind whipping at his curls.

“N—no,” Crowley stammered in denial, caught off guard.

“I’ll tell the hotel to keep a light on for you, my dear,” Aziraphale called over sweetly, waving a hand towards him graciously. And with that, the Tesla leapt forward, overtaking the Bentley and swerving back into the correct lane.

Crowley could only gape after Aziraphale for a moment, utterly astonished. “Keep a light on—keep a _light on_—do you _believe?”_

_ “I’m travelling at the speed of light,”_ the Bentley suggested in the voice of Freddie Mercury. _“I wanna make a supersonic man outta you.”_

“You know what—you’re absolutely right,” Crowley said, pulling his sunglasses from where they’d been tucked into his shirt collar and flipping them open. He slid them onto his nose and opened wide the Bentley’s throttle. “We’ll show ’em supersonic.”

__________

1. Much like the ship of Theseus, the Bentley honestly didn’t know how much of herself could be replaced before _she_ was irretrievably lost, and she was not keen on finding out.

2. It was, in fact, “Get the hell away from my car, you rat-faced bastard!”

3. Usually this would have necessitated killing the engine, but a spot of magic convinced it to leave the poor Bentley well enough alone, thank you very much.

4. Book sales excluded, of course. There’s nothing that draws a bookworm away from their collection quite like the prospect of acquiring more books, and Aziraphale was no exception.

5. What Aziraphale didn’t know was that Crowley was secretly reading his notes while he was off with his nose in a book, because Crowley had never properly learned how to drive either and didn’t want the angel catching on to this.

6. Awfully fond greetings, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m just obsessed with the idea of cherry-red Tesla Roadsters being the Mustangs or Ferraris of our generation. And maybe it’s just the marketing, but damn is it good marketing. XD


End file.
